Digital Trends

T-Mobile SDA February 7th, 2006 | by Vince Veneziani

Features and Design

Let's go over the specs of the T-Mobile SDA, shall we? It's a sleek, but not so slender candy bar-style phone with an odd little “hump” at the top that looks like a lanyard or carrying device should go there. The device weighs in at 3.74 ounces, pretty decent for a Smartphone with lots of thrills like the SDA, so don't worry about your pants pocket getting weighed down too much. It measures 4.53 x 1.82 inches and has a beautiful 2.2-inch, 65k color screen with a resolution of 320x240 pixels. It includes Bluetooth, 802.11b Wi-Fi, GPRS/EDGE, and a mini-SD memory card slot. The SDA is manufactured by HTC as the Tornado, but re-branded as the SDA for T-Mobile. So there's the down and dirty on the SDA as far as the technical specs go.

Using the SDA is both enjoyable and frustrating. The screen is absolutely gorgeous. A crystal-clear and picture-perfect display is what T-mobile is offering you with the SDA. Unfortunately, right below the screen you'll notice 10 buttons, a joystick, and a phone keypad; way too many buttons for your own good. They're also entirely too small and during my time with the SDA, I had lots of trouble hitting the correct buttons the first time. The top 4 buttons include 2 general-use buttons, a home button, and a back button. Right below these buttons you have the obvious T-Zones button which T-Mobile wouldn't be caught dead without, along with dedicated music player buttons: play/pause, forward, and backward.  The joystick and phone call buttons are then on the next row of controls. The joystick works pretty well and I had no problems with it. The “place call” and “end call” buttons work just fine too and are the only decently sized buttons on the SDA. Next up comes the keypad. The keypad on the SDA is just too small, plain and simple. 12 keys will make you wish you had your Blackberry's keypad back when trying to access websites or IM your friends. Not even T9 will help you here folks, so the SDA is not for someone with big fingers keep in mind.

As far as an Operating System goes, the T-Mobile SDA is running Windows Mobile 5.0. This is what makes the SDA an appealing phone for newcomers interested in the Smartphone market. It becomes your chance to try out and play with Windows Mobile, but not break the bank since the SDA is priced at only $299.99.  The UI is easy enough for the novice to navigate and comes with some nice pre-installed applications such as Windows Media Player and Internet Explorer. This duo makes for a great multimedia experience. You'll be able to go on the internet with the phone's Wi-Fi, get some MP3s from your favorite band's website, and then play them right then and there with Windows Media Player (WMP). Don't download too many though, as the phone itself does not have a lot of storage space. You'll need to add extra memory via the inconvenient mini-SD slot located underneath the battery. The SDA would work as a music player if the memory card slot were hot swappable and easily accessible. Unfortunately, it isn't and this greatly limits your multimedia experience with the SDA.

The T-Mobile SDA connected to the internet