My last post was type in on a thumb keyboard. Wait, didn’t I say I’d never bother with one of those? Yeah, I did, but that wasn’t because there was a keyboard involved – it was because all of the devices that had keyboards were bricks. Or touch screens. Or both. Ew.

Obviously if I just bought a new T-Mobile Dash, that has a thumb keyboard, it much be small… right?

Small is relative. Steve called it a brick, but I think that’s being influenced more by the price that existing T-Mo customers are expected to pay. Jay – a mutual friend – has wanted one of these since he first saw one; he thinks it’s small because he’s been prone to pick out a PPC brick-of-a-phone in the past. For me, the Dash is bigger than I usually like to carry but not too big that I think of it as a brick. I guess that makes it “just right”.

Ah, some history on that. I used to carry a Nokia 8290 back in the day. Loved that little phone… was uber tiny and was first and foremost a phone. Then the SmartPhone platform hit – that helped me unload a PocketPC [that I used for contacts] by offering me the ability to sync with a device that was a [normal sized] phone. I’ve never looked back. It’s only been in the past year or so that I’ve found myself wanting more out of a phone… regular people have discovered text messages, you see. Normally I would reply to SMS’s via the web: this lead to verbose and well typed messages, but it wasn’t all that mobile. I needed something more.

Enter the Dash.

I went down to T-Mobile when I had heard that they got some phones in – I wanted to see a dummy model so I could judge the size of it. I didn’t expect to like it. In fact, after seeing the Motorola Q, I expected to say “Huh… not bad. Still, not for me” and planned to wait for a new Treo model. Oops. Was I ever wrong.

Like I said, the Dash’s size is “just right”. It’s slightly shorter than my SDA. 1/3 wider than my SDA. 2/3 as thick as than my SDA. The screen is mere millimeters larger than the SDA, but because it’s a landscape screen it looks huge. Weighs the same, if not less, than the SDA. When put in a jeans pocket it doesn’t feel a rigid as the Q and doesn’t stick out and far as the SDA. Because it’s wider, it doesn’t seem to shimmy around in my pocket as much either.

The keyboard is what you’d expect from a phone thumbie keyboard. Think RIM and think Treo. Don’t think RIM Black Pearl, though: I dunno what’s up with their keyboard – I thought it was a toggle key for each key but it’s not! They use T9 to guess the key you want, as there’s two letters on every key. The Dash has one key for each letter: better design and it includes xT9 which seems to be T9 powered up or something. Dialing a phone number? I’ve been trying to get it to not work out well, but it seems that whenever you want to type in a phone number, they activate the Alt key for the silver buttons. Woot.

OK, fine, what about the tech specs? I admit that I was furious when I read them: thing takes a microSD card. My SDA took a miniSD card. My MPx200 took an SD card. Furious. And then I noticed that the thing comes with 64MB for storage. Seeing as I do almost nothing with it, I didn’t rush out to buy yet another new memory card: 49MB free after bringing all of my images and ring tones over. The only downside is that if I flash the phone, I lose the images… I’ll eventually get a new card for “off-device” storage.

Networking… this is the kicker of it all. I installed SmartPhone SharpMT mostly because I wanted to see what it looked like. I had tested the bits out on emulators galore but I hadn’t run it on physical widescreen-based device. Looked good. Figure I’d crank out a test post. Posted it. Then said “Ummm. How did I do that? I already unplugged the sync cable.”

This thing can get you online more ways than a PC can.

First off it is quad band: 850/900/1800/1900. I dare ya to bring it anywhere in the world that is using GSM and not get a call. GPRS and EDGE. WiFi is 801.11 b and g. Bluetooth of course, but it’s also the first phone in the US to support stereo BT headphones. So how did it post online? Wasn’t USB/ActiveSync. I hadn’t set up WiFi yet. Went over EDGE. Was so fast that I didn’t even notice that I wasn’t on WiFi. Oh, and setting up WiFi took 2 seconds, now that I have a keyboard to type in my WEP key: that’s already working as well.

What’s left? No idea. One downer is that custom key-overrides don’t seem to work anymore for most keys but the good things is that I don’t really have to: the Camera already has one. Speaking of Camera, the screen on this phone looks better than my digital camera does… maybe I’ll take a picture of something tomorrow and upload it over the air, since #MT supports that. Anyway, I was able to remap the T-Zone key to be IE propert, but it there doesn’t seem to be any more to remap. My CAB file that I use to restore the in-phone bitmaps to the Windows Mobile defaults still works. The lock/unlock keys are still the same; so is the press-and-hold-for-mute button… Hell, the thing even came with a KVM for J2ME applications, but I’m not going to open that – too many bad memories, after the last time I worked on that hellish platform.

Only two things I can see that would cause a frown are the there’s a silly little plastic cap for the USB port – and yes it is a mini USB port; even works with the SDA charger – and that ugly white and pink T-Mobile image that is part of the calling screen. The SDA had a nice white text on a dark blue background; the Dash has black text on a white and hot pink T-Mobile background. I found a way around that – by replacing a file with a not-so-dark blue – but I’d rather just edit it via the registry. Even found the key, but it’s a “protected” key – all the changes are ignored.. But honestly… are either thing a proper complaint? Or just a whiny tester’s mind at work? Time’ll tell.

Looks like that after leaving the mobile industry four years ago, someone finally put a device on the market that can do all of the things that we were talking about back then: always on connections that are almost broadband or WiFi speeds, insta-email at any time, the ability to use VoIP (once T-Mobile launches their new service in Seattle) or cellular signals, and in a phone that was usable, full featured and yet still easy to set up. So far, from what I’ve seen, this thing does it all.

And I’ve got one. *g*