MWg Atom Life review |
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The 10 second review:
Device: MWg (O2) Atom lifeCost: SIM free: £199.95
On Contract : £0
Available from: O2 as the Atom , eXpansys
Summary: Budget Windows Mobile Professional Device, with masses of storage and surround sound for annoying your fellow bus passengers, a bit bling looking but with a great radio application.
Note: the pre-release review device I had access to had some stability issues which made the review process rather difficult. However other users I have spoken to have not experienced this so I could have just been unlucky – feedback welcome.
Best of: on board storage capacity, Radio Application, 3G. Worst Of: cheap finish, stability issues in review device. Ho hum: finish is a fingerprint magnet.
The Full Review
MWg is an emerging brand in the mobile market, formerly O2 Asia’s mobile device business (until Telefonica disposed of it) with an investment from our friends at Expansys the existing management team took over the established atom brand and have since added devices known by the unpronounceable moniker UbiQUiO.
I’m not sure quite what target market O2 Asia had in mind with the atom, We have a touch screen windows mobile 6 professional device, with a whizzy processor and massive Onboard storage at 1 Gbyte (about 800 Mbytes of which is available when you take into account the standard loadout) it’s almost pretty enough to be a desirable consumer device but looks businesslike and yet it has ‘surround sound’ via built in speakers and a great FM radio system which are surely personal applications not business ones.
Environment
The atom had a full workout in my regular business environment connected to exchange 2003 via exchange activesync; I used the atom as my primary portable device for around two weeks.
MWg Atom Life Specification
The MWg Atom Life comes well presented in an attractive box, the design of which is similar to the current HTC offering. You can see what's in the box by watching Matt's Atom unboxing video.
Highlights:
On Board Storage: a Gbyte of onboard storage which when you add a 2 Gbyte MiniSD card and you have oodles of space
3G: becoming more commonplace but still worthy of mention, 3g means that you can talk and receive emails at the same time.
Speed: in everyday use the Atom fair whizzes along the 624 MHz PXA XScale processor is a match for most handheld tasks.
No Lights:
Cheap Finish: the atom is a bit plasticy, and the gloss black case is a real fingerprint magnet, to add to the general feel of cheapness the button icons on the silver detailing band around the device lack definition, they look like the they’ve been quickly painted over. Bit of a shame really. It’s not helped by the hastily stuck on MWg logo used to obscure the printed O2 one.
Lowlights:
Stability: on several occasions during the review I had relatively long periods without interruption and I’d look at the atom to find that it had turned itself off without warning as I indicated at the start this experience differs from almost everyone else I’ve spoken to so I’d like to hear from other Atom users with good or bad experiences.
REVIEW
Despite my reservations about the glossy finish the Atom Life is actually not a bad size nor is it unattractive per se, the poor finishing is a little irksome but overall the device is similar in size to the well loved imate JAMin.
Form Factor
The Atom’s form factor is actually pretty good the device seems sturdy and follows a pretty standard pattern
Power, stylus and MiniSD card slot at the top
Video / camera button and record button to the right (my only criticism is that the two buttons are quite close to each other and the camera button is a bit fiddly.
Volume up and down to the left and an IrDA port
As you’d expect the 3G video calling camera is positioned on the top right of the device. You can see here the on/off legends poor definition, a bit of sloppy embossing spoils the finish.
And miniUSB, reset button and headphone / FM aerial jack on the bottom notice how much better the etched legends appear here, I wish MWg had used this technique everywhere rather than the sloppy embossing
The facia button arrangement is pretty good although the soft keys are a tad fiddly more suited to stylus than finger. You can see the ‘loudspeakers’ in this view as well but more of that later. The bottom right key gives access to O2 media plus which is a media library application more evidence of a consumer target audience.
The back has the 2 Megapixel camera with strobe flash, self portrait mirror and a very conspicuous logo
Overall the Atom seems reasonably well manufactured a little prone to finger marks. I’m not a fan of the finish and the branding seems a little clumsy but a pretty good package overall
Connectivity
The Atom does offer both, Bluetooth; and IrDA. For file transfer and peripheral connection from a network perspective the Atom is tri band (dual UMTS 1900/2100 and GSM) and supports GPRS and HSDPA at up to 3.6 Gbps the onboard WiFi supports both 802.11 b & g.
The wireless manager is a little more intuitive than the standard application and a lot prettier
The Atom has a great FM radio application built in that supports RDS, traffic and news and as usual it will only operate if the headset if plugged in, you need to remember this when recording.
Operation
The fast processor and ample RAM mean that the Atom are reasonably fast, navigation is zippy and regular applications run well without problems.
MWg claim a standby battery life of 200 hours, I tend to charge devices a lot more often that this so can’t really vouch for this, I did however get reasonable talk time with about three hours of 2G calls with WiFi and Bluetooth activated.
Configuration
The Atom is a pretty standard PDA arrangement seems fairly well balanced and weighted and holds no real surprises the only unusual feature is the relatively large area of the fascia devoted to speakers
Applications
The Atom includes the standard windows mobile 6 application set you do get windows live and live messenger included in the build and mobile remote desktop all of which are useful. You also get Office Mobile in its entirety and Clearvue’s PDF viewer in the standard build.
There are three applications that stand out, the FM radio, the equaliser & SRS surround sound control panel and media plus.
The FM radio includes full RDS so you can see the station name and a description of the content.
You can set up a series of presets, the radio supports traffic announcements and best of all you can make use of that memory by pre recording your favourite stations, you need to ensure you have the headset / FM aerial plugged in or the application won’t start.
The app is reliant on you being in the right area at the time as you set frequency rather than RDS preset but it’s a useful feature
Mediaplus gives access to your media files and also to the
settings menu which is where you can configure your SRS surround sound settings
There’s a graphic equaliser
SRS surround sound
And trubass……
I’m not looking forward to sharing a bus with someone who owns one of these and has a lack of consideration for other passengers, I suppose the saving grace is that the loudspeakers are actually loud enough to hear and the trubass takes the tinny edge of the playback
Stability
This is the tricky area, I had a bit of a bad experience with the Atom, on a couple of occasions it turned itself off in my pocket, I’m not sure why and this seems a bit at odds with the experiences of others, so I’d like to hear if anyone else has had similar or dissimilar experiences.
Overall Assessment
Overall the Atom represents excellent value for money, at sub £200 SIM-free it’s a steal, there are a few things I’d change, the finish being the main one. However, overall the device is a well rounded PDA smartphone with some interesting applications.
Review by: Alasdair
[Post tag(s): smartphone blog, Pocket PC blog, Tracy & Matt, MWg, MWg Atom Life]
Permalink13 comments
Your battery problems may be connected to gap between the battery and battery cover. A piece of paper or cardboard wedged in-between may solve the problem your experiencing. I encountered your problem more when I switched the battery pack with a higher capacity made by Mugen. And wedging a piece of paper between the battery and the cover resolved the problem.
Now, onto my question. Im fairly new to the world of pda's etc, but i just wanted to know whether this device was purely locked to o2. I am currently with vodafone and was looking at buying this unit from eXpansys, but im unsure whether it will accept my sim.
Thanks once again, and i look forward to hearing from you soon.
Ross
off interrupting my calls, freezed needing a soft reset and
was slow with simple applications.I've sent it back to
expansys a month ago and i'm waiting for a new one
(really bad service by expansys)
http://www.mytechnology.eu/2008/04/16/mwg-atom-life-disponibile-su-expansys/
i was surprised also by seeing those nice wireless icons, the only bad point is the RAM memory...only 64 MB
By contrast have an old Toshiba PDA (no phone) which worked without a problem for years. The advantage of combining a phone and pda is great but hope it settles down.
A couple of questions:
1) How has the Wi-fi connectivity been for you? I have read some reviews which state that if they don't have the unit within just a couple of meters of an access point, they can't get/stay connected.
2) Does this unit have the tilt screen function? Meaning, does it display both portrait and landscape? And does it do both landscape left and landscape right (right and left referring to the orientation of the buttons)?
Many thanks,
Eric
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