Close....But not close enough (Ericsson R380s)

Member Name: simon.pitt

Product:	Ericsson R380s
Date:	29/09/00 (1167 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: PDA works well. Not too big.

Disadvantages: As a phone, not good. Firmware needs updating.

Ericsson R380s review

Used on UK Vodafone
Software versions 7 Aug 2000 (phone) 23 Aug 2000 (organiser).

Having owned and used a number of PDA's and mobile phones over the years, I was very interested in getting hold of and trying out the R380s. I already own a 9110 (wap enabled) and wanted to assess the differences between the two machines. In writing this review I am assuming that you are at least aware of the specs. for the R380 – this review attempts to give information that you will not find at www.ericsson.com I suggest you start there if you are unfamiliar with the basic specs.

The R380 is the first device to come out of the Symbian partnership, and great things are expected of it. To put it crudely, this is an Ericsson phone with a Psion operating system - this offers advantages and some (substantial) disadvantages which I hope to outline in this review. The Psion operating system (OS), EPOC, is small, fast, stable, battery-efficient and extensible – all ideal features for a mobile device OS. Symbian has grand ambitions for this concept and the R380 is the first of what I am sure will be many excellent products. But therein lies the problem: this is a version 1.0 product, and the old adage applies – never buy version 1.0 and wait for version 2.0 (or 3.11 if it’s a Microsoft product ). Whatever - this is still, in technology terms, a landmark device. If you’re into collecting, this would definitely be one for the display cabinet and an appearance on the antiques road show in 2065.

Suspicions are initially aroused because of the very late arrival of the 380. It was first announced way back in 1999, and it has taken a very long time for it to appear. This is usually indicative of development problems. Remember, Ericsson might have their badge on the front, but this is very much a joint effort. I suspect that if Ericsson had had sole responsibility for the project, (as Nokia did w
ith the 9110) and had been able to tweak their existing OS software and use that instead of EPOC (a completely new OS concept for them), the 380 would have appeared a lot sooner than it has.

Well, it is here, so was it worth the wait? As Edmund Blackadder would say “Yes……………̷ 0;And No”.

What’s right:
Size. The 9110 is a great PDA/Phone, but it is too big. The 380 design concept works very well. Here we have a phone which, although large by today’s standards, is not so large or heavy that you cannot comfortably keep it in the breast pocket of a business suit. Flip it open and hey presto – there is your PDA. The screen is small, but not too small, and for me the font size and choice of 4 shades of grey combine to give a very clear and legible display. One up to the 380.

SMS / IMAP - POP3 Email / WAP / Contacts / Calendar:
These work. I won’t bore you with the details but they do. The OS shines here – applications open quickly and it is easy to move around in the menus and select items. The only exception to this occurs when you first switch the phone on. If you have a reasonable number of contacts / calendar items in place (and who wouldn’t, after all, that’s the whole point of this thing) then it takes about 20-30 seconds before you can open up the phone and start scrolling through your appointments or searching for contacts – before this, you will see a blank screen and it will look as if the phone has locked up or the OS has crashed. Just give it the time, and all will be well. This could be a problem if your phone is off and you want to do a quick check on an appointment – that 30 seconds can seem like a long time. WAP works well and confirms my belief that WAP only makes sense on a device with a reasonably large screen (larger than a 7110) and a quick way for entering text (in this case virtual keyboard or graffiti like handwritin
g recognition). Note that there is no HTML browser and no Fax capability.

Irmodem. This worked with everything I threw it at. The drivers worked as advertised..

Voice dial. It works, although it would be nice to have more than 10 entries and the ability to link to phone functions like the MotorolaTriband has (Irda activation for instance).

What’s OK-ish
Synchronisation software. This works, but is very limited in what it does. On balance, this is probably a good thing as it seems that the more “tweakable” you make synch software, the easier it is to make it fall over…….I use Outlook, and all my contacts and calendar entries copied over with no problems. Inbox and notes also synch, and you can specify maximum message sizes --- oh, you know how it goes. Make a change on the 380, synch again, and there is the change in Outlook also. This level of functionality is all I need.. Others might be more frustrated. Not as fast as a Palm synch. You can’t synch via irda, and I couldn’t get it to work on a Win2K laptop (using the cable), although according to Ericsson it does work with 2K. Ericsson UK were in the process of “assessing” the software on 2K, so couldn’t confirm to me that it did in fact work, and it wasn’t just some marketing guy’s wishful thinking. Anyway, life is too short so I gave up and installed on a ’98 SE desktop machine.

Backup/restore software: This worked most of the time. That is not good – you need to be able to rely completely on backup/restore systems. I twice lost data while trying to backup/restore which meant a re-synch with outlook to recover the information. This was a pain, because a full backup of the 380 was only around 180K and would restore in 30-40 seconds, whereas a new synch would take 30 mins………I tracked this problem down to the data cradle / power supply. Basically, to avoid the restore glitch,
you should restore WITHOUT power connected to the phone – then it seems to work OK except that sometimes not all the data is backed up.

What’s bad.
The 380 is a “closed” system. You cannot add programs or extra memory. Don’t like the fact that there is no Fax or web browser? Tough – there’s nothing you can do to add that functionality – you are totally dependant on Ericsson coming out with a firmware upgrade.. Will they? Who knows, but it seems likely that future upgrades will be restricted to bug fixes and minor feature enhancements, not major feature upgrades. Why? Because there is very limited memory in the 380 – somewhere around 1.2 Mb available to the applications for storage when the OS is loaded. All this is completely at odds with the Nokia concept for the 9110 which has memory expansion (with the weird Multimedia Card format memory) and the ability to add additional software / functionality. This allows, for instance, owners of the original 9110 to add WAP and bring it up to the same spec as the 9110i – something you can’t do with the 380. Trying to understand this decision to go with a closed system for a moment, I would guess that Ericsson/Symbian want a highly robust system that they have completely under their control so that users end up with a device that – alright – might have restricted functionality, but on the upside would be very stable and predictable. In other words, it would do fewer things, but really well. Unfortunately this argument falls on two counts. 1. The open system 9110 is also very robust and 2. The 380 is plagued with bugs and problems with functionality (see below). On balance, I have no problems with a closed system as such – if the system does everything that I need (and for me the 380 does), I’m quite happy with a closed system – but it must do what it does well, because there will be no 3rd party work-around you can
install to take up the slack in the OS.

Use as a phone.
Forgetting for a minute that the 380 is also a PDA, how does it measure up as a modern GSM handset? People, the news is not good – as a phone (flip closed), it blows chunks. How do I hate thee? Let me count the ways……
Network commands can’t be used from memory. For me, this was the biggest problem as I use call forwarding a lot by storing the codes/numbers in the phonebook memory. Example: divert to an office phone would be **21*number#send. Key that in and no problem. Save it as a memory entry and recall/send and you get a “phone number error”. Seems the 380 doesn’t like numbers that begin * or #. Bad news for anyone using a pre-pay sim and wanting to check remaining credit…..
No profiles (OK, I know it’s a Nokia thing, but something similar is on the R320 and T28, so why not the 380?)………
No speed dial. At least I couldn’t find any way of setting them up…..
Can’t select memory to use with the phone. Nokias allow you to choose to use either sim or phone memory for your phone book. The 380 will only let you use the “contacts” database. Why is this a problem? I keep my essential numbers on the sim and its easy to find them when you are in a hurry and using the sim as the phone book – but you have the option to go to the phone memory if you want. You cant do this on the 380. You try scrolling through 400 phone numbers looking for an entry – it’s a pain in the proverbial. There is a workaround for this – typing #1 will take you to the sim listing and you can scroll down to the one you want. Not ideal……….
No support for cool new Ericsson accessories like the MP3 player or FM radio. I guess this is because although the 380 LOOKS like a 320, the OS is completely different and doesn’t support the “dynamic menu” functions that
these devices apparently need……..
Can’t edit numbers recalled from memory or call register (flip closed). In fact all you can do with them is dial them – no options at all…….
Calendar view (flip closed) is broken. You should be able to scroll left and right to see all the text for a calendar entry and use Yes to go to the entry itself. You cant. To access the calendar, you have to open the flip. In contrast, the in-box (flip closed) works as advertised…..

Miscellaneous problems.
Screen image can distort when keys are pressed (esp. the yes/no keys)…..
Backlight functionality (flip open) is brain-dead. The guy who coded this clearly never tried to use the 380 with the lights off. The light times out after 15 seconds as it should. However, instead of coming on again when you tap the screen, you have to close the flip and push a key. Stupid, stupid, stupid………
Stylus is very easy to loose – I thought Ericsson were generous providing 3 spares in the box, but having got through 2 in less than a week, I understand why………
Voice memo function is not implemented well. You can record a voice memo. That’s it. You can’t manage voice memos in the PDA. You can’t record more than one. There’s no obvious way of deleting it. You can’t attach them to an email / use them as alarms……….
Strange display glitch. On several occasions, the date disappeared from the standby screen and was replaced with a word (“Data”) which would not go away whatever I did. I couldn’t identify what caused this to happen, but it happened 3 times in one week and the only thing that cured it was a factory reset and full restore (after playing hunt-the-good-backup – see above tale of woe re. backup/restore)………


Conclusion.
Despite all these problems, I liked the 380 a great deal a
nd would have kept it but for 3 things:
1. The calendar view problem
2. The network control codes from memory issue and:
3. Ericsson could not tell me whether a firmware upgrade would fix these issues (or even when I could expect a firmware upgrade.)

The closed system is more a personal decision thing – as I said before, if the device does what you want then in my view there is no reason not to go for a closed system and it does offer some (theoretical) advantages over an open model. I suspect that most of the problems I have outlined will be solved by firmware upgrades in the fairly near future, and at that point I shall revisit the 380 and perhaps even give it a permanent home. As it is I took it back and I am now the proud owner of a Nokia 6210 with optional li-polymer battery. Now THAT is a nice handset – review to follow……


Simon Pitt

Disclaimer:
All opinions expressed are my own and I mean every word. Bite Me.

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