Will average messaging Joes mind a cupcake made out of Windows Mobile if there's tasty, pretty icing on top? We open up HTC's newest smartphone to find out.
Review summary of the T-Mobile Shadow:
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 The T-Mobile Shadow offers real visual improvements over the standard Windows Mobile 6 interface, but we doubt any users will be fooled into thinking this isn't a WinMo phone. The Neo interface looks fantastic, but it actually adds very little functionality to the phone, and instead makes functions easier to find and activate. That's nice, but maybe we were looking for something to truly transport us from Windows Mobile into HTC's own phone realm. The boxy look won't impress anyone, but Windows Mobile geeks should be satisfied that this phone has real smartphone chops, with Wi-Fi and all the calendar and office prowess that you'd expect from a Windows phone. The rest of us will have to watch on and wonder what HTC could have done with the Shadow if it weren't floating on the Windows Mobile raft. Release: October 2007. Price: $200.
Pros: Nice material design. Neo interface is very spiffy and convenient. Wi-Fi is a fair substitute for 3G, for now. SureType keyboard brings QWERTY to this small device.
Cons: Beauty may be skin deep. Neo interface doesn't really improve calling, messaging and other core functions. Wi-Fi but no UMA? Too bad.
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Full T-Mobile Shadow Review:
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With the T-Mobile Shadow, HTC has again tried to lay an interface atop Windows Mobile to improve the experience. Just as they originally did on the HTC Touch, the company has created shortcuts and a pretty graphical overlay to help users access popular features of the OS. This interface, called Neo, doesn't add much in the way of function, but it sure is pretty to look at.
Design - Good
The T-Mobile Shadow is a nice looking phone for a Windows Mobile device, but we're starting to wonder if the design team at HTC isn't just a bit stiff for our tastes. We've never been fans of the design of the T-Mobile Dash, it seemed to have a bit too much unused space on its face four our tastes. The same is true of the Shadow, which has great textures and, on our copper review unit, a nice, rich color. But the lines are too staid, too square. There is a rim around the screen that is a bit too large.
The phone uses a SureType keyboard, a design we've liked since we saw it on the BlackBerry Pearl. With mixed results, T-Mobile has borrowed the Pearl's keyboard, but has opted for XT9 intuitive input instead of RIM's own software. Typing on the keys was comfortable, but the keyboard didn't do the best job at recognizing our input. A few times, some very basic words were missed, and the phone favored nonsense instead.
In addition to the SureType keys, the Shadow is also distinguished by a center scroll wheel, an option that is getting more popular. In theory, we like having a wheel in the center instead of a simple button, but in practice, as with many aspects of the Shadow, the so-called improvement doesn't really improve the experience. The phone is not responsive enough to input on the wheel, and takes some time to respond to its spinning. Then, most apps and menus do not accelerate as you spin the wheel faster, so the wheel never leaves you feeling more in control of the phone. Often, we were relieved to remember that we could simply press, we didn't have to spin.
Calling - Good
Beyond the other additions to the Neo interface, little has been done to improve calling with HTC Shadow. MyFaves is front-and-center on the Neo interface, but that's where we expect to find it on a T-Mobile phone. The address book and contact list are accessible once you begin typing, just as they are on other Windows Mobile phones, but HTC hasn't improved the experience any. This is okay, since we've always felt that call management was always a strong point for Windows Mobile, especially version 6. Still, when the phone menu moves from the slick Neo interface to the Windows Mobile screens, we felt like something was being left behind, something with which we wanted to have more fun.
Call quality on the Shadow was okay, but not great. Calls suffered from some static and reception issues in our lower Manhattan offices, as the phone generally held between three and four bars of reception. Speaker-independent voice recognition worked very well, as did the speakerphone and Bluetooth pairing with our headsets. For battery life, we got more than 5.5 hours out of a single call, which is just more than the 5 hours HTC promises.
Messaging - Very good
The T-Mobile Shadow is a competent messaging phone, perhaps even better than most other Windows Mobile 6 Standard phones, but the extra steps HTC has taken add convenience, and not real feature enhancements. From the Neo Today screen, you can see the sender and subject of a new message and compose a message of your own, but once you require any more info or action than that, you are again taken out of HTC's wonderland and into Windows Mobile's office park. We would have preferred the ability to read messages, or perhaps even search for messages from the top-level, which would keep us from digging in the dirt too much.
For messaging, expect the standard Exchange support, along with a host of settings pre-loaded for other e-mail clients. Instant Messaging for AOL, MSN and Yahoo is also available, as are the standard array of SMS and MMS options. These are all easy to use, no surprise difficulties. The keyboard isn't the best SureType experience we've had, but we're still fond of the SureType layout and we definitely think it has a future. The RIM BlackBerry implementation of SureType is very good, and very intuitive, more so than the Shadow. The keys themselves were plenty comfortable, though we might have liked a bit more travel. Still, it wasn't the keys that hampered the experience, but rather the word recognition software, which is really the key to the SureType design. And XT9 just didn't seem to understand us as much as we'd like.
Music - Good
The music player on the Shadow looks a bit better embedded into the Neo menu, but the enhancement is barely skin deep. The player will present album artwork in the window frame, and you can scroll through songs using the wheel. Unfortunately, that's about the extent of the enhancements. On the top level, when we scrolled faster, the list didn't respond much to our urgency. And, any advance play functions or music management drops you directly into the pit of Windows Media Player.
There are a few niceties. The phone can handle stereo Bluetooth, for one thing, and microSDHC cards up to 4GB, for another. But otherwise, all you get is a new skin for the same old player.
Camera - Mediocre
The camera on the T-Mobile Shadow is average for a camera phone, a judgment that means disappointing and barely usable in non-phone speak. Colors were a bit saturated in our sample shots, and images were alternately grainy and blurry, depending on the amound of available light. Passable, perhaps, but not very good.
The photo gallery on the Neo Today screen should have been much more impressive, but it doesn't make showing off pictures any better than the standard Windows Mobile gallery. Pictures have to share screen real estate with the sidebar frame. Tall pictures are fine, just cropped a bit on the left side. Wide shots, though, are reduced to tiny thumbnails. It would have been nice to have more viewing options available from that top menu, but if you want to check out fine details or manage the pics on your phone, you'll have to dive into Windows Mobile, as usual.
Scheduling and productivity - Very good
The Neo interface is well-suited to displaying calendar information. Appointments pop up in the calendar plug-in, as well as the notification tab, if they are urgent. You can scroll through your next several appointments, not just the next one, which is nice. Again, a bit more customization and, well, power here might have been nice, but for the real calendar app you'll have to jump in the pool. Even so, the WinMo 6 calendar is powerful, if not pretty.
For productivity, T-Mobile includes the entire Office Mobile suite. We wonder if this is the best choice for this phone, considering the audience. While Office has some deep editing capabilities for Word documents, we wonder if a simpler, more elegant solution might not appeal more to the phone's target, and also take better advantage of the scroll wheel and simple design. We're specifically think of the Picsel browser, which we recently saw on Samsung's SCH-i760 on Verizon Wireless. Picsel lacks advanced editing, but is quite elegant when it comes to viewing documents and even Web pages. Just what this phone needs, some elegance below the surface.
Web browsing - Good
Okay, this is an easy one, sing along if you know the tune. Web browsing over Wi-Fi is good, and pretty fast. Web browsing over EDGE is not good, and quite slow. Web browsing using Internet Explorer is worst of all, and should be avoided at all costs. Maybe we're too influenced by our iPhone, or the half-dozen other phones and mobile devices with browsers that are far superior, but we simply can't stomach Internet Explorer for anything but real emergencies. So, if you're in a free Wi-Fi zone and you really need to know if that was Harrison Ford in "Apocalypse Now," go ahead, the Shadow can handle it just fine. But when you start clicking on links, you're going to run into problems. And when you scroll through pages, the wheel and the phone won't be able to keep up.
Price and availability
The T-Mobile Shadow is currently available from T-Mobile for $200 with a contract agreemnet and an instant discount of $150. A mail-in rebate of $50 is available, when signing up for a qualifying plan.
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