T-Mobile MDA Smartphone

I had metropcs, liked it alot except that it didn't work in the some of the smaller cities I travel to in florida a lot. I've had a tmobile prepaid phone for over a year that has been a great phone but it's really not economical for being your only phone, i.e. I was paying about 25 a month to use it anyway so it was worth it to pay a little more and get more service. Recently I ditched my landline that was costing me nearly 50 a month in florida and didn't even include long distance. The metropcs was good service, their @metro stuff was handy but at peak times they were overloaded (the internet services were overloaded no problems with the phone calls).

I noticed the MDA on tmobile's website at a cheap price, probably because the Wing just came out and they were getting rid of these so I decided to take the plunge. The phone arrived quick, however, whomever set it up didn't put my text messaging or my internet access on the phone. That's the only really bad thing I've heard about tmobile, you have to watch your bills carefully because they get messed up a LOT (i.e. wayyyy more than it should). Only took two days to get the phone which really wasn't bad, with 300 voice minutes (unlimited weekends) and unlimited internet and a thousand text messages my total bill was only like 8 dollars more than what I was paying with metropcs for something that wasn't even full out web browsing like this phone has.

What's in the box:
Phone
Mine came with battery and sim card preinstalled
headset
basic case
power adapter
usb cable

What else you'll want right away:
DC power cord
Mini SD card (too expensive in the stores, go to ebay or look for a sale. Office depot has the 1 gig cards for under 20 this weekend but you can often find 2 gig cards for that on ebay)
Probably want a better case with pockets for the sd adapter and extra stylus and headset if you use that.
The extended battery if you go away days at a time, the included battery is pretty wimpy so either buy extra batteries or just go for the big one (ebay is cheap but shop around I found better prices on the cell phone stores and some even had free shipping too)
screen protector: The screen is touch sensitive to help protect against scratches one of those plastic sheets is a good idea, cheapest on ebay.

Chargers:
This phone uses a standard mini usb connector for data port and/or power. You can plug this phone into any usb port that supplies power and charge it. Not all usb cables provide power, I've found the heavy silver transparent jacketed usb cables, like those that come with card readers, generally work fine (so if you've got a card reader the cable from the card reader will charge your phone). I had chargers AC and DC from my motorola 360 which also has the usb style plug (same chargers as the RAZR) those work perfectly. Tmobile puts a nasty note on their ac adapter and their usb cable to "only use this one" but others will work. Now it might void your warranty if you admit you used another charger but what they don't know won't hurt them and USB provides standard voltage and current, devices can't draw over what the usb bus provides so there's really no way their cables or chargers could be any different. Only small issue I had was that windows couldn't see the phone when I plugged it into the hub I use for everything, I put the phone on the usb port on the side of my dell flat panel and everything was then fine---yeah guys some quality usb cable there but it might just be a picky device also and not the cable or the hub.

First use:
Push the power button on the top. The first time I turned it on, it sucked down updates for about fifteen minutes.

Features:
Windows mobile 5 operating system
Pocket Outlook and word and a few other utilities
Bluetooth
Wifi
Slide out keyboard
Camera

Why is this phone so fancy:
Well it's a PDA that integrates (via activesync) with your outlook calendar, word wordprocessor, spreadsheet, notes and even powerpoint applications. It has wifi AND bluetooth, about the only thing I've seen so far that this phone CANT do is hook into a standard wifi hotspot (hotspot at home is the name of the service) for voip calls. I really need to research to see why tmobile's hotspots are different, I bet someone figures out a gadget to let it work at home, have to watch that).

Because this device runs windows mobile 5 (and there's only one newer version we're up to 6 now) it can also run software you add yourself. I just ordered a bluetooth gps unit and software that will let me put my venerable dell x5 away and use this phone for everything including gps navigation in the car. They don't admit that there's any way to use your MDA for a modem for your laptop but I've seen several forum discussions from folks who've figured out how to make that work, so don't discount it as impossible yet. With the addition of a memory card you can use your MDA like a usb pen drive, i.e. you can carry files from work because the mini sd drive on your phone will be seen by the standard windows storage drivers in every version of windows since 98 (i.e. you don't have to have a driver for the phone on every computer, windows will see your memory card no matter what machine you plug the phone into via cable).

Making a call:
When you press the phone button on the bottom left a touch screen shows up on the screen, you can also access speed dials you program. You can also go to your contacts click and hold the person you want to call and a menu will pop-up to make the call. I think there are other ways to make calls happen just haven't found them all yet. This is not a one handed phone, although I've heard there might be some hacks available on the internet to change button assignments. So far calls are always clear and loud, no complaints with that. I live in an old concrete block house, most cell phones either don't work or work spottily in my house, so far this one gets at least two bars everyplace in the house (usually more in the living room where we have floor to ceiling jalousy windows) and it also works in my room where most of my past cell phones have not been able to get a signal at all.

Internet?:
Well if you didn't want to invest in internet over tmobile's data network the built in wifi lets you connect into regular home access points (but only for internet). Mobile 5 supports WEP and all that junk (which I didn't bother to setup on my home access point). We're about to have a public wifi point at work sometime in the future too. Starbucks and McDonalds are getting into the wifi business too and at least in my area there has been talk of city wide free wifi.

Ringtones?
Well if you're like me ringtones are a big deal. They don't discuss it in the manual but through research I found out that the MDA can use .wav, .midi, or .wmf files for ring tones, you put them on the memory card with your desktop then use the file explorer on the phone to copy and paste them into the ringer folder on the MDA. It won't support mp3 files directly but there are tons of utilities out there that will translate file formats. I had several ring tones I made myself for my motorola 360 phone in mp3 format and I just used xilisoft video converter (that also can convert sound formats) to translate them from mp3 to wmf and popped them in the folder; voila more ringtones.

Is windows mobile hard to use?
It's primitive, it has to be considering how little memory these devices tend to have, generally you have the cut paste and select all options you're used to in desktop windows. I'm used to windows mobile because I've had several pdas running windows 2003, mobile 5 is no different if you've used those, mostly program compatibility and speed have been upgraded, functionality doesn't seem to have change much other than it comes with a few more goodies.

The gps package I bought:
Semsons.com has the iguidance 4 and a well regarded 32 channel bluetooth gps receiver for $129.00 right now. The package I use on my dell is no longer available and my maps are years old so I just took the plunge.....I'll post in here how I like it, I loved mapopolis and I know this is going to be different from that.

What else will run on here?
Anything that runs on windows mobile 5 "should" run on this phone. You may have seen devices like this referred to as "smart phones" that's what this is, there are loads of stuff for this from games to diet tracking software, your only limits are onboard memory and lots of software will run from the storage card, so often you aren't even giving up that. The only product I've read will not run on this phone is skype - which is a voip type service (it just doesn't have enough processor to run it apparently). I don't have any interest in running skype so I'm not worried about it.

Overall what I think of the phone:
Because of the size of the screen it does take a little getting used to so you don't accidentally make calls or activate stuff like the media player. For the size of this thing it has huge functionality. The battery that comes with it is pretty wimpy, if you use the web stuff or wifi you'll be charging it every day, I ordered the extended battery online, just be careful ordering batteries because there are at least three versions of this phone and the battery doors and possibly the batteries too may be a bit different.

Like the phone, but Tmobile is holding to their reputation for screwed up billing, when the phone arrived my internet wasn't active and neither were my text messages setup. I sent a few text messages and saw the charges pop up on my account. That is another thing neat about this phone you can go to tzones and pull up your account activity and features with a few clicks on the phone. I don't quite understand how I can have unlimited internet and then text messaging isn't included with that. The sidekick internet plan includes unlimited text messages but they're apparently trying to get people to use the hotspots so you get that instead with the MDA. Currently hotspots are found in Kinkos Fedex stores, Starbucks and Borders books, I don't think I've been to a medium sized city yet that doesn't have one of those businesses.

From what I've read if you call up and insist loudly enough you can get tmobile to give you just about anything. I've got a little while to play with this and decide if I want to change my plan (I was told I can change anything I want up through next year). Apparently with tmobile just changing your services around doesn't necessary trigger a new contract start period, usually that only happens if you upgrade or change a phone out (that is a change from years ago where any little change meant they got another 2 years out of you). The early termination notification that I saw said max they can get you for is 200 bucks, which is a lot of money to me but I have heard of worse in the past so that is at least a comfort to know the worst case scenario.

I've only made a couple of voice calls on it, that's really not how I use my phone, mostly I text. The voice calls were fine and I have way more signal with this phone than I'm used to in this old house (with cell phones). This phone comes with pocket AIM, Yahoo, and ICQ, I've got accounts with all three IM utilities. You have to have internet service turned on or they charge IM messages as text messages so be careful with that.

Should you buy the insurance? Most of the time I don't, just because if the phone never breaks they're getting free money from you. It's 5.99 a month for insurance on this and if it breaks there's something like a 100 dollar fee to replace it (I'm not clear when you have to pay that either). This phone does have a lot of gadgets on it and they are not selling the regular MDA anymore they are selling the Wing which is a four hundred dollar phone currently. I'm still considering the insurance. Another thing I might go for is the unlimited mobile calls to tmobile customers, most of the folks I speak to are tmobile. Right now my bill is under 70 a month for unlimited internet and 300 voice minutes and a thousand text messages, considering that I was paying nearly 50 for a land line and another 30 for my prepaid cell phone I really think this is a better deal, the metropcs for less functionality but unlimited minutes (no contract) was working out to 62 a month. Just be aware that not every web site works well with windows mobile, they pretty much have to be written for it (and many are) here locally we have www.superpages.com, it does movies, weather and telephone book searches it works pretty well on the mobile.

Overall I'm happy with the phone, not happy that tmobile messed it up before I even got it but I suspect that's going to be the relationship with them, i.e. watch them like a hawk. You can elect for email billing (after you've made a couple of payments the regular way) and I believe you can pay on their website also. Again, happy with the phone and so far the service just have to watch the billing.

Hotspots: I was out at the local mall and decided to pop into the Borders books there to try out the hotspot feature. Since there was nothing in the manual about connecting to the hotspot I thought it was as simple as clicking on the hotspot login button in the programs menu...NOT (in fairness if they'd set the phone up right before I got it this might have been pre set). The phone kept telling me it could not detect the hotspot, it occured to me that perhaps wifi needed to be active, turned that on still no apparent difference so I called customer service.

At first they put me to regular support, who was clueless, they told me that the store was responsible for the hotspot not tmobile.....again NOT. But they did give me a few clues to why it wasn't working, just like any hotspot you have to let the phone "sniff" it out, the phone finally found the hotspot but then it was asking me for a password.....sigh. When you call customer service the "computer" asks you what you need, the first time I called it didn't recognize the word "hotspot" but the second time I called it did recognize the word and put me specifically to the hotspot support department who finally got me the password information I needed (combination of phone number and some unique personal information). After I finally got the phone number I needed it came right up. After you have the required security data input in the phone then you click the login button and you can also set it to auto login.

Be aware that wifi and bluetooth will both suck your battery down faster, I leave them off when they aren't being used. (At least in the case of the bluetooth you don't want to leave that on all the time anyway unless you want to risk some hacker stealing your phone book or something). Not that I have any top secret numbers in my phone but some of us do care about that kind of thing.

other stuff: I've found out that pocket internet explorer in mobile 5 has just as bad of a reputation as desktop internet explorer. Firefox has an "unofficial" mobile version called minimo, the phone will warn you when you run it that it may not display correctly because it wasn't written for mobile 5 but so far it seems to work pretty well and I really like it a lot better than i.e. Best yet it runs from the memory card and doesn't suck up precious onboard program memory unless it's actually running. Minimo doesn't do bookmarks yet but it has tabbed pages just like its big brother desktop version and it comes with two pages of many useful links for mobile enabled web pages. Minimo includes "RSS" which supposedly works to properly display web pages that may not be written for mobile viewing. Minimo allows you to setup page caching (on the memory card also that will speed things up when you go back). You can get minimo from the firefox home page.

Web browsing: I've been playing with it on and off for a few days, it seemed to me that web browsing was really slow for some reason (slower than it should be) and often I seemed to be having issues even getting a connection. Being the techie that I am, I started sniffing around in the phone menus and came upon the network settings for the GPRS network (tmobile is working on a EDGE network but it is not going yet--possibly this year from what I'm reading). There are two options for protocals to the network, if you notice slow web browsing try one of the other options (there are only two on my phone), this really speeded up my connections a LOT. I suppose it could have been this way because my phone wasn't setup properly when it arrived, still annoying.

Camera: Had a bit of chance to play with the onboard camera. For a cell phone camera the quality is quite good if you ask me. In normal room lighting or outdoors it does great, in dim lighting such as in a restaurant.....well it doesn't do so good there but that isn't that unusual for these cameras. The camera is activated by a button on the side of the case or you can get there via menus. Color is good, focus is good and there is some zoom capability and three quality settings up to 1.3 megapixel. I have several really nice digital cameras, this is just a toy for me but it's not a bad camera for whipping out the occasional snapshot and of course if it's already on the phone you can send images on a picture message. Images can be stored in system ram or moved to the storage card which is probably the easiest way to get them out of the phone. I think I read this thing should be able to do video but if it does I haven't figured that out yet.

update:
Had the phone a week now, just got my extra high capacity (3100mah compared to like 1300 for the original battery) battery in the mail friday. It's worth the thirty dollars!I get several solid days of moderate use with this new battery where with the original battery I was charging it every day just because it was getting to the 50% mark. There are also battery charging gadgets available that let you charge your cell phone from AA batteries (and you can use rechargeables so you could carry a few sets around with you to recharge if you'll be away from AC or DC for a few days) but the extended battery is better. Also got my gps setup in the mail from semsons.com, they recommended the iguidance and the itrek m5 bluetooth gps. The iguidance installed fine, but you need a 2 gig mini sd card to hold the maps (software will run from the card also if you want to save the phone memory). This phone is able to run this package pretty well, 2D mode is great, 3D mode sometimes draws a bit slow (but that could be because iguidance 4 is written for mobile 2003, hasn't been rewritten for mobile 5 or 6 yet from what I can tell) the voice commands for turns etc. are easy to understand just using the built in speaker (i.e. no need to get one of those gadgets that plays over your stereo unless the car is really noisey or you just want to. I am now able to take my nice old dell axim x5 out of my purse and I can do everything I need to do with this one device, of course now I've got all my eggs in one basket but from what I've read the company that manufactures these for tmobile has a great reputation for building sturdy dependable devices. I've dropped it once so far, fortunately it was in the case so it had some protection from the fall but I still wasn't happy it fell (on the asphalt in the parking lot). As a gps device, the screen is a tad small, this unit has no more horsepower than my old axim (which is at least 4+ years old) so it runs as well as the axim but I like my old mapping package a lot better but sadly that is no longer available--but it would most likely run on this phone if I didn't mind the old mapset I have. Still love the phone, only other annoyance I've run into is the location of the camera button, it's on the top of the unit and I keep pressing it accidentally while trying to get it out of the case. I have a nice niteize case from my old phone that also fit this one, it's nice because it has pockets for extra stylus, memory cards, SD adapter etc. It's a bit fat with the extended battery on there but since it's nylon and elastic on the sides it can accommodate quite a variety of phones. I'm looking for a horizontal case but so far I don't see niteize making one of those....still looking on that one.

Update, fancy software I've found: I was messing around on the internet today and stumbled upon google maps for the handheld. I didn't know this existed and at least as of this writing the package and the service is FREE. You can download the package via the handheld or load it via activesync (I downloaded direct to the handheld memory card). This service only works if your handheld has internet access but whats so fantastic about it is that you don't have to buy new maps all the time and it lists businesses around you. So say you're in a big city and want to know where the closest pizza joint is to where your standing, pull up google maps and there you go. The only disadvantage is it won't work in the blue boonies where you don't have phone service (but coverage is so good in florida with tmobile I haven't found a place yet where I didn't have service). The google service works with your gps too! It gives directions but I'm really more interested in the clear well labled maps.....now this one I'd have no problems using if I just wanted to spot something on the map. The other big deal about this utility is it will work on phones with less storage because you don't have to download maps to be onboard the device, it loads what it needs off googles mapserver on the fly. This utility can be downloaded at www.google.com/gmm.

First annoyance: I thought it would be kinda nice to be able to check my email from the phone, only problem is, there is very little control given as to "when" your email is downloaded.........it just does it periodically and apparently after the emails are downloaded it doesn't shut the screen down so doing this sucks your battery dry pretty quick (even the extended battery). Of course I discovered this when the power company decided to have a problem in my neighborhood for ten hours and I had to really play around to figure out how to shut it off after it was setup (shut off from the phone but the menu options are not obvious). Also the phone screen seems to be on lately whenever I take it out of the case, no idea what I might be pressing, locking the phone seems to have stopped this.

Also learned another tmobile lesson, unless you get unlimited text messaging on your phone, avoid the IM software for yahoo, AOL, ICQ, etc. tmobile insists on charging IM as text messages whether you pay 30 bucks for internet or not (I had a long argument with them about it). So my choice is don't use the IM or pay another 60 bucks a year for unlimited text messages. Tmobile offers unlimited internet and texting for the sidekick but the plan I got includes the hotspot instead of the textmessages. I'm a bit tempted to insist on a sidekick plan and give up the hotspots, it would actually save me ten bucks but then I wouldn't have the hotspot ability (unlimited calls from a hotspot that don't count against your minutes). Had another discussion with their customer service about the fact that the phone wasn't setup when it was received, she gave me some baloney about they "can't" set it up they don't open the boxes before they're sent out, I told her it was strange......my phone arrived with a sim card installed but none of the plan features setup......I said if you're going to do that you'd better be putting a bright orange note on top of the box to call and be sure your phone is setup correctly before you get a nasty surprise at billing time........sigh. Still mostly very satisfied with the phone, haven't had anyone complain they could not hear me and the bluetooth and wifi being built in add a ton of functionality to the phone, the only thing that gets a tad annoying is when you're making a call there is no button layout displayed on the screen until you touch the "keypad" spot on the screen so that makes it a little awkward to get through menus especially if you only have so long to respond.

update: Had the phone a couple of months now, still love it. With the extended battery I get days of heavy use but I still recharge it when the battery hits about half. The new version 2 of google maps is positively outstanding, it can pinpoint your location just using the cell towers in the area to within 1700' you don't even need a gps to use it any more (but it still works with a gps as well), fantastic and it's free. I don't make a huge number of phone calls but the ones I do make are always clear, the only thing about this phone is you have to be careful how you hold it to your face or you'll block the micophone so you have to learn to kinda hold it a bit away from your face, that's minor I can live with it. I love the outlook capabilities no more phone numbers in one device but not everywhere issues. Apparently one of the software updates that came down when I first turned on the phone allows it to use mp3 files now for ringtones and it can play them too with the media player. I bought one of those travel speaker things and got the plugs (you need a submini plug to go to the phone and the speakers usually have mini plugs) I needed so I can sit the phone on the table and hookup the speaker and play music. The quality probably wouldn't make an audiophile sing but it's good enough if you just want some tunes someplace and don't want to use earphones. I've seen the wing in the tmobile store, it looks kinda flimsy to me, I'd much rather have this little guy and the company that makes these, HTC, has a great rep for making solid devices that last forever. If anything I like this phone more than I did when I first got it.

update: Recently I went to the hassle to get a tax number for my own business thinking that perhaps I could get business plan rates; what a fiasco that was. When I first called and talked to customer service I was told that all I needed to get a business plan was a tax number, ok that's easy enough. Then I get transfered to a department that wants a change of responsibility form from me....I'm directed to a tmobile store to obtain this form. The tmobile store tells me there is no such form, I call them back, they fax it to me because the store is giving wrong info (according to them). I send them all their information including a copy of my tax exempt certificate (which is all you need in florida as a sole proprietor and you don't need a federal id if you don't have employees) and then wait...called several times, no one apparently knew that tmobile does not give business accounts to sole proprietors those types of businesses can only get individual accounts.

After four days of waiting I call again, get handed some bs about contacting somebody outside Tmobile (yada, yada, yada). Was getting ready to send an email to the email address on the change of responsibility form but they called me first. Someone called me and told me that sole proprietorships can only get personal accounts......I told her I would be screaming to the highest mountain because I'm being descriminated against because I don't have employees. I'll be researching to see if they're doing anything wrong. They ain't getting away with blowing me off....if someone had told me from the very beginning that I could not get a business account without a federal employers ID I would not have moved so quickly to get the damn state tax number. They're descriminating and I plan to find out if they're doing anything illegal by treating folks this way. The IRS accepts sole proprietorships as a business without a federal id number so how can they say well you don't have employees so you're not good enough?

The training issues at TMobile are simply awful, every time you call there you get different answers and you generally have to call multiple times to get anyplace at all. They keep the "minute free" secret three digit customer service number kinda hidden so they can try to make you use your minutes to call them.......this is another practice I don't care for. There's a huge class action suit going in california right now over the way cell phone companies charge their customers, I can only hope that some serious changes are on the way.

Overall, the service has been good I can only think of one several hour outtage in my area in the time I've been with them, can't really complain. My complaint is the SERIOUS lack of training issues they have with the people giving customer service. I got a fax number to complain about the situation, I'm not holding my breath, this will undoubtedly need to go to the local consumer protection folks and maybe farther. If you're going to require employees in a business before you view them as a business your information on the web and other places needs to clearly state that and train your folks to tell sole proprietors that they only qualify for individual accounts because you've chosen not to call those people a business. My gut instinct is that they're doing something wrong here and I'm just mad enough to do the research and prove them wrong.

update,3-2008: I've had this phone for a number of months now, tmobile released a special lots of minutes deal that was only a little more than I was paying and also reduced the fees for the unlimited internet; changed my plan over. The vast majority of my phone calls last less than two minutes...ok no issues. I got rid of my land line completely thinking this phone was dependable...that may have been a mistake. Lately I've had a LOT of dropped calls, tmobile of course gives you the normal lip service, blah, blah, blah. I found out the true issue through my own research on the net. Apparently tmobile does not support simultaneous data/voice communication, the last rom update for this phone initiated a "fix" that if the phone thinks it has lost connection to the internet it will reset the radios, of course in doing so it also causes the call to drop, you can tell if this is going on if you drop calls on the average of every four minutes. So this is widely discussed on the net and tmobile refuses to fix it??? sounds typical, you can find the registry hack that is supposed to take care of the issue but at least in my case it doesn't seem to have cured the issue completely. Also windows mobile 6 upgrade is available for this phone which vastly improves battery life and may also do something about the call drop situation....but at least as of this writing tmobile refuses to release the update to mobile 6 on their website...they're apparently attempting to force the purchase of a wing or one of the other smart phones with mobile 6 already onboard. This is ludicrous, I love this phone I think it stinks that they feel they can get away with this. I just had a good fifteen minute long call no drops, if you go into the communications manager there are several icons, if data is lit up then hit the button before you make your call, I have to keep experimenting to see if this is really a work around or if I just got lucky and it didn't drop the call but I've got my fingers crossed right now. Yeah it's a pain to have to remember to do that before a long phone call but it's better than three hundred dollars for a phone that's no better than this and could quite possibly be inferior in a number of ways. If you're brave there are ways to unlock the phone and install your own update, however, it does not appear to be for the feint of heart and you could be left with a hunk of dead electronics if you screw it up. Tmobile needs to support this phone properly and release the mobile 6 update and fix their stupid network so it can do simultaneous voice and data, I guess they think people are dumb that we won't figure this out. I'm not saying anyone else is any better but this is just dumb.

Tethering, 2008: At some point Tmobile started allowing tethering to a laptop. The tmobile internet network (GPRS) is not much faster than dialup but if you need to check your email or do some mild browsing and don't want to pay for an access point if you can't get a free one then this is fine. Apparently the settings necessary to get this working may vary from area to area, in my case there was no special modem string required, you just drop in the usb cable hook to your laptop and then activate the modem on your mda, you'll need drivers that are only installed with active sync for your notebook. Works fine, slow but works fine.

update 6-2008: Well I wanted a my faves plan and apparently the mda doesn't support this because it requires software running on the phone. If my friends all had tmobile I could have just gotten the mobile to mobile thing but I didn't have that luxury here since the friend I want to speak to most is on another service. I looked at tmobiles offerings and while they're supposed to be offering some more pda phones at some point they aren't now and no one is saying when they will be offering them so I took the plunge and got a WING. The wing is only slightly faster than the MDA but after a few hours of playing with it I have to agree that they fixed all the gripes I have with the MDA, it's smoother, seems faster and I think its a bit better as a phone as well and at least so far I think the reception in my house is a lot better, I have so many trees on my street and I'm also on hill I would classify my house as a problem reception zone and it often is. I really didn't want to lay out nearly four hundred dollars (I haven't had the account long enough to qualify for any rebates etc.)for the Wing but I figured the myfaves would pay for itself in the long run and I'm finding that the internet browsing on this phone is much smoother and more reliable than it is on the MDA, most likely because of the wm6 professional offered here instead of the WM5 on the MDA, if tmobile had ever followed through and upgraded the MDA to wm6 I probably would not have upgraded but the lack of the myfaves support may never have been addressed, so I possibly still would have been stuck upgrading no matter what.