5 Dec 2009

The T-mobile Tap: an epic, and slightly rambling, review

Just skip to the end if you want to get to the meat of this review. There is a long preamble...

I recently purchased the new Tap phone from T-mobile that was released mid-November. In an ideal world I would be buying an iPhone or possibly an Android phone, however this isn't an ideal world. I should point out that my previous phone (also on T-mobile) was the Motorola RIZR. This phone has been my companion for the last two years and during that time I've watched — with a small degree of envy — as successive versions of the iPhone and then various Android handsets have graced the market. In comparison my RIZR looks positively antiquated, though somewhat amazingly I would still use it to browse the web, or at least act as a (very slow) bluetooth modem for my MacBook. Tethering support for the iPhone is something that people are still waiting for AT&T to sort out.

I've been patient enough to see out my two year contract with T-mobile and I've been eagerly anticipating the purchase of a new phone. With my contract finished, the world was my oyster. I was free to pursue any phone option out there so surely I would finally get the object of my affections, the iPhone 3GS? The iPhone makes perfect sense for me. I'm a huge Apple fan, I have Mac computers at home, I use Macs at work, I have an iPod touch (not to mention several other iPods). I'm a MobileMe subscriber. Why wouldn't I get an iPhone? Three main reasons:

  1. AT&T - I don't think I need to add anything here, you know what I'm talking about. I'd also add that things have been pretty good with T-mobile. Just simple things like, cleanly laid out websites, excellent support forums, and good overall service.
  2. Cost - we have been on a pretty sweet deal with T-mobile and any change from our current plan, especially to a smart phone such as the iPhone (with AT&T's mandatory $30 per month data plan) would mean a near-doubling in our monthly bill.
  3. The future. I like Apple because they are fairly dependable with their annual product release cycle. I think if I was to buy an iPhone, I wouldn't want to purchase mid-cycle.
So what about Android? The situation with Android is changing very quickly these days. The initial release of the T-mobile G1 seems almost a distant memory now. News and rumors of new handsets appear almost daily. On the one hand the Motorola Droid is gaining ground quickly, but the big issue facing Android (at least in my opinion) is the need for every handset manufacturer to overlay the default Android OS with their own interfaces. So we have the Sense UI from HTC, TouchWiz from Samsung, and MOTOBLUR from Motorola. These interface UIs mean that any updates to Android have to wait until the manufacturers update their respective UI. This had led to a big fractionation of the Android ecosystem. The Droid may be leading the pack with Android v2.0, but others are still on v1.6, or even v1.5. Motorola recently updated the MOTOBLUR interface on the Motorola CLIQ, but it still remains with Android v1.5.

So I like Android, and I think that as a heavy Google user an Android phone would almost be as good a fit for me as Apple's iPhone. However, with so many rumored handsets due to appear in 2010, and with so many aspects of the OS still being in their relative infancy, I'm prepared to wait just a little longer. So my current plan is that I don't mind waiting another 6-8 months to see how the market plays out. By that time there should hopefully be a new version of an iPhone, one that is possibly on another network in addition to AT&T.

But I still wanted to get a new phone now to replace my aging RIZR. As my contract was approaching its end, I was pleased to see T-mobile announce their new Even More Plus plans. In essence, these plans allow you to pay for your phone in full with no discount, but then stay on a month-by-month contract. This appeals to me because I don't want to sign up for two more years with T-mobile only to discover that I absolutely must have the next generation iPhone next summer, and so need to change carrier. One other feature of the new Even More Plus plan that is financially appealing is that you can offset the cost of the phone purchase and spread it across 20 interest-free payments. The basic costs of these plans are also very tempting, a 750 minute family plan starts at $49.99 per month, and if you add in unlimited texts for two lines, this rises to $69.99. There is also an unlimited text+web plan at $109.99 per month. However, this is only worthwhile if you are considering two Android phones as these would otherwise require data plans at $25 per month. Non-Android phones require a much cheaper $10 per month data plan, and so it is cheaper to get the basic plan (with or without texts) and add the data plans as separate components. If 750 minutes is not enough for you, there is also a 1500 and an unlimited plan (which are $10 or $30 more expensive than the 750 plan).

One downside of the Even More Plus plans, and this is something that you might not read about on the T-mobile website, is that once you make the switch, you can't go back. The T-mobile store assistant that we spoke to, suggested that you can never go back to a standard contract plan, though I imagine that future situations might allow this (especially if T-mobile were losing potential customers). T-mobile is not unique in allowing you to buy the phone to go contract free, Verizon also allow you to do this and also have an intermediate 1 year contract, with semi-discounted handset. However, I think that T-mobile are pushing their Even More Plus plans a little more, and they compare very favorably on price.

So I decided that I would stick with T-mobile for now, and change to the new plan, leaving our myFaves plan behind. So now I just had to decide on a phone. I was still flirting with the idea of using an iPhone on T-mobile and just sacrificing the 3G network speed. T-mobile provide excellent assistance to iPhone users on their network so this is a viable alternative. In the end, I decided that I would be happy having 'anything better than the RIZR'. And so I was attracted to the Tap.

The Tap is branded as a T-mobile phone even though it is manufactured by a lesser-known company called Huawei. I wouldn't worry too much about this. Huawei do make other phones and they are the largest Internet and telecommunications device manufacturer in China, so they're hardly a fly-by-night company. Before I discuss the phone in a little more detail, please consider the two following points:

  1. The Tap is not an iPhone
  2. The Tap is not an Android phone

If you compare the Tap to the high standards that the iPhone has created, then you will be disappointed. Bitterly disappointed. I feel fairly confident that if this phone had been released three years ago, it would have taken the world by storm, it's combination of features would have been astounding. But three years is an eternity in the world of smart-phone development, and any phone released today will inevitably be compared to products such as the iPhone. It's also worth mentioning that I don't think T-mobile are pitching this to the Android/iPhone crowd. This phone is for people willing to take a step up from a basic handset, who don't want all of the features of an Android phone and/or can't afford to pay for all of those features. The Tap is $179 if you buy it on the Even More Plus plan, and is free with a new or renewed contract. And remember, you can spread the cost of that $179 over 20 interest free monthly payments.

So what does the Tap have? Well the feature list is quite impressive:
  1. It's a touchscreen phone, featuring a 2.8" resistive screen (240 x 320 pixels), with haptic feedback
  2. It operates on T-mobile's 3G network
  3. It features GPS
  4. Supports multiple email accounts
  5. 2 megapixel camera, which can also record video
  6. Built in FM radio
  7. Built in voice recorder application
  8. Music player, which supports MP3, AAC, and other formats
  9. Video player
  10. Full screen web browser, with accelerometer to switch between portrait and landscape modes
  11. Landscape or portrait keyboard for texting/emails
  12. Capable of sending text/picture/video messages
  13. Google maps application installed (which uses the GPS)
  14. Includes Telenav turn-by-turn GPS navigation application
  15. Other selection of applications include: stopwatch, timer, notebook, unit converter, alarm, calculator, calendar, reminder application, and world time
  16. Supports addition of other Java apps
  17. Memory can be expanded by use of a microSD card (not included)
That long list of features reads very well, but the truth is that many of these features are not implemented as well as they could be. So let's proceed to a summary of the phone as described by three headline categories:

The Good
  1. Great form factor. Relatively slim phone, with a smaller screen than many of it's competitors makes it very 'pocketable'. It has a fairly stylish look, with an attractive metal frame. Comes in two colors: 'midnight blue' and 'berry'
  2. Supports T-mobile's 3G network, so web-browsing is relatively brisk. Drops to EDGE network when outside of a 3G area
  3. Google maps with built-in GPS is the stand-out application for me. Works very well and gives you access to all of the wonderment that is Google Maps. E.g. live traffic, satellite view, favorites, directions etc. When you are moving, your current location updates in real time and indicates your direction of movement
  4. FM radio is a useful addition
  5. Low cost of the phone, coupled with $10 per month data plan, and relatively cheap monthly plans means that this is a phone that will still get you on the web without costing the earth
  6. Being able to add Java apps means that you can add the excellent Snaptu application which features a decent twitter client, facebook app, Google calendar, and many other useful tools. Also the Opera Mini web browser is a great addition to the default browser, which I prefer to the default browser for most pages. However, Opera doesn't support auto-rotating of webpages in landscape mode (you can still manually change to a landscape view).
  7. It's fairly easy to add multiple email accounts
  8. A permanent icon on the home screen allows you to quickly change sound profiles (silent, vibrate, airplane mode, custom sound profiles etc.)
  9. Any java application can be 'minimized' to allow it to run in the background. Google Maps takes ~10 seconds to launch, but you can return to it instantly if it is minimized
  10. You can use bluetooth to pair the phone to a mac (and presumably a PC) and use it as a modem. Very useful if you travel a lot with a Macbook (as I do)
The Bad
  1. Touchscreen interface is a little clunky, in many cases I preferred using the D-pad on the front of the phone. This often made it much quicker to navigate menus and even control the 'pointer' in the web browser. 
  2. Email is limited to 100 emails on the phone. This would limit its use to anyone who does a lot of emailing
  3. Texting or writing emails is a little bit of a frustrating affair. The portrait keyboard with a T9 interface is relatively quick, and offers dictionary corrections. Switching to the landscape mode, you get a qwerty keyboard but no spelling corrections, also the smaller keys make it a little bit harder to press the desired letters. Additionally, texting too quickly seems to overload the Tap, and you often have to wait for it to catch up
  4. The Telenav application can be used on a free trial basis, but then will cost $10 per month to use. I haven't tried this application and will stick to using Google maps
  5. The main home screen features a TouchWiz-esque widget bar. But it is not actually TouchWiz, just trying to emulate it. You can drag widgets to the home screen but it can quickly become cluttered.
  6. The supplied headset uses the microminiUSB port, no 3.5 mm port for standard headphones.
  7. You can only store 3 phone numbers per contact, and only one email address.
  8. You can set up IMAP email accounts, but your mail folders do not all sync to the phone. There is a setting to specify that emails deleted on the phone will be deleted from the IMAP server, but I couldn't get this to work.
  9. Apart from media files (music, pictures, and video), the only other file format that the phone seems to support is plain text files (not even RTF, and certainly not Office files). Having a PDF reader would have been a big plus.
  10. No copy and paste
  11. Not always easy to switch back to a minimized application. If there isn't a 'desktop widget' for the app, you have to navigate through the menus to find your application.
  12. If you turn the phone off, when you turn it back on, the desktop reverts to its default state and all widgets are placed back in the drawer
The Ugly
  1. There are many aspects of the phone that you frustratingly can't change. The main menu grid of 12 applications are fixed, so if you don't want to use Telenav, then you can't remove it. You also can't remove any of the preinstalled java apps (which include some trivial games that you probably won't ever play). You also can't add, remove, or reorder anything in the widget drawer. The default web browser adds a set of bookmarks which you also can't remove. If would be great if any Java application that you added could be placed in the widget drawer or on the desktop.
  2. I added about 150 songs to the Tap and the music player seems a little sluggish when you access lists of these songs. AAC songs (from iTunes) seemed particularly problematic. For each AAC file I added, the Tap seemed to add a similarly named file, but with a ._ prefix. These small (4kb) files were not music files, and you can't play them, but you can remove them. Overall, the music player is disappointing because of these issues. Perhaps it would be fine with just MP3 files, but I haven't tested this.
  3. When you connect the Tap to a computer via a USB cable, it doesn't mount as a regular attached volume. There is PC software which you can run to sync contacts and calendars, but this is PC only software. On a mac, the phone appears as a CD icon on the desktop. This only lets you look at the PC software, you can't navigate to anywhere else on the phone (either the phone itself or the internal microSD card). If you want to add/remove any media files you can connect to the phone from a computer via bluetooth (which is much slower for adding lots of files). Alternatively, you can keep on taking out the microSD card and adding that to a USB adaptor, so that you can plug it into your computer. A bit of a hassle really.
  4. Syncing contacts or calendars also requires the PC software. To sync my contacts from my mac, I had to go through a few hurdles, and had to have access to a PC with either Outlook or Outlook express installed.
  5. If you play music through the supplied headset, pressing the headset button starts playing music through the internal speaker instead. However, pressing the button twice doesn't switch the music back to the headset.

Summary

I like this phone, and I like how I can now (compared to my RIZR) check the web, and send/receive emails. In particular, I love the Google Maps application. I expect that I will be using this application a lot, especially when travelling. There are many features of the phone that aren't going to win any prizes (e.g. the camera and music player). At the same time, I don't plan to use the phone to listen to music (I'll stick to my iPod) and I probably won't use the camera at all. The camera is exactly what you should expect of a 2 Megapixel camera on a cell phone.

The price, the cheap data plan, and the fact that this phone can be used as a 3G bluetooth modem for my mac means that I think that this phone is a good purchase, at least for me. I'm not expecting Huawei or T-mobile to make any software updates for this phone, though I hope I'm wrong. The inability to change the applications, or even remove the default web bookmarks is a little frustrating, but I can live with that.

I would rate the phone 6/10. However, the addition of the free Snaptu and Opera java applications change my rating to 7/10. Snaptu is a fantastic addition to any java-enabled phone, and I hope that they continue developing the application. If you are a fan of twitter, the Snaptu client is in the subset of twitter clients that allow you to add multiple twitter accounts (something that is very useful to me). Opera lets you look at many pages in their full beauty, rather than in their mobile optimized form. It also lets you sync bookmarks with your desktop Opera browser (as long as you sign up for the free Opera Link service)

I've listed a lot of negatives above, but I think that you shouldn't get too hung up on these. All phones will have weak points (just read some of the criticisms of the Motorola CLIQ or the Samsung Behold II), it's the overall experience that is important. Having said this, I would say that if you are a heavy email user then this phone might not be suitable for you. Even though it supports multiple accounts, the 100 email limit and lack of 'true' IMAP syncing are strong points against this phone as an 'emailing phone'.

I look forward to using my Tap over the next 6–8 months but I will also be keeping my eye out to what is on the horizon.

Update 2nd July 2010
Corrected 'microUSB' to 'miniUSB'