We’ve had the UTStarcom X6700 for a week now and since our first post, things have bettered. First thing we can tell you that is if you’re running legacy applications written for anything but Windows Mobile 5.0, you may find trouble like we did. It’s that trouble that made us make the comment, “[our] first impressions are not too good.” Now that we discovered which programs are the trouble makers (pocketMax’s phoneAlarm and SPB Pocket Plus) and upgraded phoneAlarm to the WM 5.0 beta and updated Pocket Plus to it’s latest edition, things improved. One important note on Pocket Plus, do not use the miniSD Free Space indicator as it “freezes” your device for 12 seconds as Pocket Plus is polling the card for free space and it allows you to do nothing for this period of time making your device useless until it figures out who much room is on the miniSD card. We don’t know if this is an issue with the hardware, Windows Mobile 5.0, or Pocket Plus as SPB Software did not answer our request for support.

Now that the little things have been overcome, we are enjoying UTStarcom’s little wonder. It’s still slower then heck to sync and install programs even though we upgraded ActiveSync to 4.1. But out of the hard to remove from cradle, the XV6700 is a huge improvement from the XV6600. We mean, huge! Battery life is better but still drains pretty quick. We’ve done no side by side comparison with the XV6600 or the Samsung i730 (another battery eater,) but it seems to be about the same if not a little better then the i730 is with it’s slim battery. The screen resolution, just run of the mill QVGA, looks sharper and clearer then the i730 that it had us checking the spec’s to make sure it wasn’t VGA. It’s just a really nice screen.

The phone audio is good. You have to move the ear piece around to find the sweet spot or you’ll be struggling to hear the caller on the other end. The i730 is definitely the loudest Pocket PC phone we’ve heard and the most comfortable on the ear but the XV6700 isn’t bad either. Since the keypad is a wide QWERTY type, you really can’t dial phone numbers from it like you can the i730. So if you’re concerned about finger prints on your screen, get a screen protector or use your stylus…or get over it. Speaking of dialing, WM 5s SmartDial is awesome! There is no need for Contacts to be looked up anymore as just pressing the ten digit keypad using the letters on the each key to narrow down your selection works like a charm. We love it! As of now, this is the only way to dial your call as UTStarcom does not bundle voice activated dialing like most other smartphones come with.

Microsoft’s Voice Command, nearly one year old, is not WM 5 compatible, so says UTStarcom, but some have reported that it does work. We have contacted Microsoft to verify or deny this and after 30 minutes on the phone and contacting various departments, no one could give SvenOnTech a definite yes or no. We’ll probably grab a copy to try it out and let you know for sure in the final review.

So in short (yea, this was long,) things are better and we are impressed with the XV6700. It’s far better then the Samsung i730 at this point and we’d venture — dare? — to say better then the Palm Treo 700w. Stick around as the full review will be coming shortly.

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