In mid-February I was authorized to upgrade my seemingly dinosaur like work cell phone to a better more capable phone. My trusty Nokia 8390 had served me well but I was ready for more features, more power, and more capability. As I browsed Cingular’s site for a new phone my eyes came upon the Motorola MPx220 Windows SmartPhone. I had heard about Windows SmartPhones from Scoble (although he has a different model) and I was intrigued by the idea. I did a little bit of research on Windows SmartPhones and I fell in love with the idea; being able to sync with my Exchange Server from anywhere, writing little web apps for it, etc. So I decided to order it; that was the beginning of the end of my love affair with Windows SmartPhones.

First of all, Cingular is a pain in the ass. I truly believe that a good deal of their employees are complete asshats. First the phone was delivered to a “Carlos Santillan” at my office. My last name isn’t Santillan, hell that’s not even close, but it made its way to my desk so I didn’t really much care who it was sent to. The next mistake? The SIM chip had the wrong number on it so I couldn’t use it until they sent me a new one. It gets better; the replacement SIM chip got lost by dumbass FedEx (it still has yet to show up) so I had to go down to a Cingular store and demand that they give me a working SIM chip.

After the fiasco with Cingular was behind me, I was jazzed to use my SmartPhone. I think that lasted a whole 48 hours. The PDA like features of the phone itself were neat and the interface was pretty cool but it failed at its most basic primary function; a phone. I could barely hear anything out of the speaker. If I was in my car or anywhere where there was a little bit of background noise then I wouldn’t be able to hear anything. I would always have to answer the phone in a closet just to hear the other person.

I read that earlier versions of the MPx220 had this problem but it was supposedly resolved with a new version of the “firmware”. Unfortunately, in my case, this had no effect since my phone already had the latest “firmware”. Determined to own a Windows SmartPhone, I went to a local Cingular store to see if I could get a phone that worked. The sales lady put my SIM chip and battery into a brand new (like my phone wasn’t brand new) MPx220 and I had her make a call. She could barely hear the person on the other line. The low volume thing appears to be a notorious defect to these phones.

Considering that the only SmartPhone that Cingular sells is the MPx220, I would think that Microsoft would care not to sully their SmartPhone brand name and they would make Motorola figure out that people can’t hear using that phone.