For years, I railed against the convergence of PDAs and mobile phones. In those years, I wanted my PDA and phone to be separate, an opinion formed by using nearly all converged devices of the period, which were bulky, underpowered and true jacks-of-all-trades rather than masters of anything. The Treo 700w and AT&T 8525 marked the shift in my thinking on the subject of convergence, however, since these devices – more than any before them – performed very well as both PDAs and mobile phones. Sadly, many of today’s handhelds fail to meet the standards of these two devices (one has been discontinued and the other is nearing the end of official sale), but I recently had the opportunity to use a new handheld that has them both beat. The HTC Mogul.
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The HTC Mogul, which is sold in the United States exclusively by Sprint, is a Windows Mobile 6 Professional Smartphone (the Professional tells you that it has a touchscreen interface). Like the Treo 700w and AT&T 8525 before it, the Mogul is a powerful smartphone with a full-featured version of the Windows Mobile OS, unlike non-touchscreen Windows Mobile devices like the Motorola Q or Samsung BlackJack. The Mogul is powerful, comfortable, stylish and expansive – all qualities I demand in a converged device.
Replacing the two-year-old Sprint PPC-6700, the Mogul nixes the nubbed external antenna in favor of a more up-to-date fully internal unit. In side-by-side comparisons with the PPC-6700, the Mogul performed faster and more reliably, and at about 0.3 inches thinner, the Mogul is easier to carry in your pocket.
The design of the Mogul is much closer to that of the AT&T 8525 and upcoming 8925 Tilt than its PPC-6700 predecessor, and although its design isn’t exactly revolutionary, what the Mogul lacks in revolution it more than makes up for in stability and ease-of-use. Featuring the popular slide-to-hide format found on most Windows Mobile touchscreen smartphones, the Mogul is thinner, sleeker and more comfortable to use as a phone than any of its predecessors or contemporaries (though I am a fan of the T-Mobile Wing’s rubberized shell). The Mogul is also fast, using a new Qualcomm processor to tear through common tasks.
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Aside from the new Qualcomm mobile CPU, the Mogul boasts 802.11g Wi-Fi, Bluetooth 2.0 peer-to-peer wireless connectivity, 256MB of flash memory (for file storage), a microSD flash memory card slot, a 1500mAh Li-Ion battery, and compatibility with Sprint’s high speed EV-DO wireless data service. The 256MB flash memory is much roomier than the 128MB often found on devices of this type. This makes it much easier to store programs and data, though if you need more room there’s a microSD slot for additional storage. The Mogul ships with a 512MB microSD card, though because the Mogul is compatible with new SDHC microSD cards (the first Windows Mobile device to boast such compatibility), you can add up to 4GB of additional memory as of this writing. Unfortunately, the 64MB system memory seems a bit low for a handheld of this class; it would have been nice to see that doubled to help accommodate some of the more demanding applications on the market.
In addition to more storage memory, the Mogul also provides more external hardware controls than the PPC-6700, including a scroll wheel, voice dialing, Messaging and Communication Manager shortcut buttons and an invaluable hardware switch for the built-in Wi-Fi, a switch which is built into my Dell Latitude laptop, but a newcomer to Windows Mobile devices. This switch saves an incredible amount of time and keeps you from having to go through on-screen menus and taps to activate or deactivate Wi-Fi. One complaint about the external controls, however, is that you cannot toggle the phone by pressing the Talk, Start or OK buttons; you must press the power button to take the Mogul out of sleep mode if you want to make a call. I found this very annoying.
Aside from the button issue, using the phone portion of the Mogul’s software is easy and straightforward. Press the green Talk hardware button on the face of the handset to bring up the dialing screen, which allows you to dial with an on-screen keypad, from your Call History or straight from your Contacts list. In my weeks of testing, I found the Mogul’s call quality to be average for a device of its class, though the speakerphone is lacking in volume, both in terms of hearing the voice of the person on the other end and their ability to hear you. On a full charge, I was able to get about 5.8 hours of talk time from the Mogul, which is good, though not as good as some non-WM handsets like the 10-hour BlackBerry Curve.
Using the Mogul, you can access the Internet at speeds up to 800Kbps; in my tests I often saw speeds in the 700Kbps range. This is a fantastic feature, blowing away current competition from AT&T and T-Mobile. Whether you’re browsing the web on the handheld itself, downloading content from a service like Audible.com or Windows Live Search, or using the Mogul as a high speed wireless modem for your Windows laptop, the Mogul comes as close to mobile broadband as you can currently expect. And thanks to Windows Mobile 6’s new Internet Sharing utility, connecting the Mogul to your PC as a wireless modem is as simple as a few taps of the screen. The extra speed is also handy if you use Direct Push technology to wirelessly sync with a Microsoft Exchange server. Windows Mobile 6 supports Direct Push right out of the box, and I was able to get the Mogul connected and syncing with an Exchange server in less than five minutes.
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Windows Mobile 6 isn’t that much of a departure from what you’ve seen in Windows Mobile 5, though there are improvements here and there. HTML e-mail is handled much better in WM6’s Messaging software, which is also enhanced to make it easier to keep your different messaging formats and accounts separate and clearly accessible. Call history is also stored by contact in WM6, so if you pull up Joe Smith in your Contacts utility, you can see the last number of calls placed to and received from Joe in an easy-to-read listing.
One complaint I have concerning the Mogul is really directed at Sprint, who has removed the invaluable Windows Live Search and replaced it with an application available on many Sprint phones called On Demand. In fairness to Sprint, On Demand does offer more features than Live Search, but where Live Search is free, most of On Demand requires that you pay a fee to use them. You can easily remove On Demand from the Mogul and add Live Search, or you can have both installed at the same time. To download Windows Live Search, point your mobile browser to wls.live.com.
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I also wish the Mogul had onboard GPS, though this is the only available feature the handset lacks. It’s easy enough to add GPS by way of a Bluetooth receiver, but the inclusion of an internal GPS receiver would have made this device nearly perfect.
The HTC Mogul represents years of Pocket PC Phone evolution, and is far and away be best Windows Mobile device I’ve used. I’ll withhold final judgment on what is the current reigning champ of Windows Mobile until I get my hands on the AT&T 8925.
If you’re a Sprint customer, you can’t go wrong with the Mogul. It’s fantastic.
Grade: A-
