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< Esato Forum Index > Sony Ericsson / Sony > Symbian phones > Help me people (wait for P990 or get k-jam?) Bookmark topic

i would prefer a phone with a pda...the p990i.
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Posted: 2006-01-31 20:55:33
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Well, let me share my experience with you . I have had my K-Jam for about 2 months now. I've been down the path of doing ALL the mods and hacks discussed on the various WM5 forums and there area heap of them to make the device fully useable. I've stripped out the crap from the extended ROM, done the cache hacks, loaded it up with a few apps and found it not too stable. So over time I have hard reset it, and added app by app, testing after each installation to see whether the device is still stable. In fact I have now hard reset the thing ten times adn rebuilt it each time.

Here is what is really bugging me. I justified buying the K-Jam to myself on the basis I would be able to use it to get mail from the company VPN based mail system when I travel, which is quite frequently. So I get the unit, I set up the VPN client, I achieved initial success with getting company email once or twice and though all my troubles were over. I have a mobile device that gets VPN based mail reliably. How wrong can a man be!

The issue is this - unrealibility! The VPN connects sometimes, NEVER always, and I cannot predict when it is going to work and when it is not. There is NO rhyme nor reason as to why it will connect one day or at a certain hour and not the next. It is not the VPN, as I access this from my desktop PC everyday many times. The OS is just flaky. Sometimes it trys to connect using the VPN and sometime it does not. I cannot find a way to always make it attempt the connection via the VPN client, it has a mind of its own. When it DOES try to connect to the VPN, sometime it works and sometimes it doesn't. Sometimes it tells me the mail server address is incorrect, and then when I try again two or three times, it connects. Next time I try and it will not connect. Sometimes it tells me the VPN details are wrong, try again three or four times and it connects, I've changed nothing, nothing is different, just this time it will work. It is totally unpredictable and illogical and hellishly frustrating.

I've blown away the settings and re-entered them multiple times, both for the VPN and the email. I've hard reset and then just set up the VPN and email client. I've loaded the Profimail email client and configured it. It worked for 3 days ( I was ecstatic thinking the issue was the crappy Microsoft email software) and then it stopped working. I have not managed to get a VPN connection since on the K-Jam, and that was 4 days ago.

At the same time, I am finding that my applications will randomly lose their registration codes and need to be re-registered, and also the phone does random resets. I end up with SMS messages in my inbox from calls I have missed due to the phone resetting. I also find now that when I re-enter an email profile, after I turn off the phone at night or do a reset, the profile disappears. I am SO over setting up my email profiles. I guarantee I could do it in my sleep.

I have even severely limited the software I load after a hard reset - latest version is backup manager, mobibook reader,stock manager, small menu and total commander and that is it. Still no stability. Frankly I am sick of it and tired of not being able to use any software I choose that is supposed to be WM5 compatible.

Put all of that together and I find I have an inherently unreliable phone. After about 10 hard resets and literally hundreds of soft resets, I am left with a device which will not reliably perform the functions I want it to do and used to justify its purchase.

What is even more annoying is that each time you hard reset and start again, things work OK - for a while - and then they start to turn mushy and the device becomes unreliable again.

I have reluctantly gone back to using my Nokia 9300, (unfortunately I sold my P900) and what a pleasure it has been. The phone is reliable, the software is stable, the email setting stay in place. the GPRS works all the time. I don't need to soft reset it every day and it does not do resets when it feels like it. It does not support a VPN client, but then again neither does my K-Jam (at least not reliably). I really cannot afford to spend a couple of hours fixing the thing and re-setting it up on a regular basis and crossing my fingers and hoping the phone keeps on and working all day.

I am sure people will respond to the thread and tell me their experience is that this is a perfect phone and they never have a lick of trouble. Well, good for them, but that is sure as hell is not my experience. I have persevered with the damn thing, I have been ever hopeful that this time I have got the perfect stable setup, but it has never been stable long enough for me to be comfortable travelling without a backup phone. I am not sure whether it is a hardware thing or if it is just Microsoft releasing buggy unstable code, but either way I am absolutely pissed with it.

I have been playing with electronic organisers since 1990 (before the first Pocket PC came out), I have had PPCs, Palms, Psions, Sony P900s etc. The only device that caused me more grief that the K-Jam for reliability was the IPAQ 5450 - (which was the worst pig of a thing I have ever owned and was in my opinion HP should have had a class action against them for releasing for sale a device which they used their customers to take through alpha testing for them).

I'll continue to watch and see what happens with the K-Jam and note other people's experiences and I will probably load the new ROM if and when Imate ever get around to releasing it but until then it is going to be a paperweight on my desk. Shame really, the potential is enormous, but for me the experience is to frustrating and time consuming to justify using it on an ongoing basis, as it stands today. I need a phone that works reliably all the time and a PDA that is available when I need the data and the K-Jam does not give me that at the moment.
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Posted: 2006-02-05 03:37:59
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Thats a shame. I guess everybody has there own experiences with their own devices. My only gripe so far with the K-Jam is when I go back to the today screen, lock it , put it in standby then into my pocket, I will take it out after about an hour and some how the screen will be in landscape mode, or an app will be open or the phone function will be on or something and the phone will still be locked... not sure how that is possible.
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Posted: 2006-02-05 12:18:42
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k-jam's features are good, but p990 is classy, a p series is a p series they can't be compared. but i recommend you buy the k-jam.
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Posted: 2006-02-05 12:37:07
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Sorry if the obvious poit has been made, but the P990 is a 3G device the K-jam is not. Once you've used 3G for data and video calling you wouldn't want to go back to 2/2.5/2.75G systems.
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Posted: 2006-02-05 17:07:09
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Quote:
On 2006-02-05 17:07:09, Jah wrote:
Sorry if the obvious poit has been made, but the P990 is a 3G device the K-jam is not. Once you've used 3G for data and video calling you wouldn't want to go back to 2/2.5/2.75G systems.


2.75g?? is it real? then a few months later there will be 3,15g or something like that?
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Posted: 2006-02-05 17:18:48
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@(sc)chronos

EDGE = 2.75G!


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Posted: 2006-02-05 20:33:04
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Quote:
On 2006-02-05 20:33:04, Jah wrote:
@(sc)chronos

EDGE = 2.75G!




Oh dear, i am still at 2.5g! Need to buy a new phone. But i will wait fot the p1000.
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Posted: 2006-02-05 21:01:31
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@ Masseur and Madbob
What are the details of the videos that you are watching on your k-jam? Frames per sec, resolution, bit-rate, audio bit rate? And these play absolutely smoothly?
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Posted: 2006-02-06 12:27:04
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Not sure exactly, But I will find out.

Mine are basically the same encodes that are done for the P-Series using the smartmovie encoder. 3ivx codec at 90% consistant quality, with the drop frames box ticked.

I will attempt to do some more encodes specifically for this phone, and I will see how far I can push it and let you know.
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Posted: 2006-02-06 14:40:34
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