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Review of The MWg Atom LifeJune 11, 2008 In this day of ever increasing device size, the MWg Atom Life is a breath of fresh air. This small, lightweight Windows Mobile device is slim, sleek and aesthetically pleasing both to the touch and eye. Do not however make the mistake of thinking this slim and sleek package covers a weak device. Nothing could be further from the truth. Under the covers is an impressive and snappy processor, a generous amount of ROM and a fantastically bright and crisp QVGA display. While you won't find a hardware keyboard on the Atom Life, you will find a device that any serious business or media lover will enjoy at a price that is much gentler on the budget than most devices in the class. Before getting into the device itself I should explain the history of MWg. Mobile and Wireless Group (MWg) is essentially born out of the ashes of O2 Asia. O2 Asia produced several successful devices in the Asian and European markets including the original O2 Xda Atom, the Xda Zinc, the O2 Flame and Atom Pure. When it came to the North American market however, O2 never had a solid distributor which limited - dare I say eliminated - their success in the market. When O2 Asia was taken over by MWg in 2007, they immediately began working on several key areas. First, they began bolstering and updating the existing O2 devices. This is reflected in this specific review of the Atom Life. Originally when the device was released under O2, it was running Windows Mobile 5.0 Professional. Since then, MWg has issued a Windows Mobile 6 Professional upgrade for the device and sell the device with that OS. Secondly, they began working on new devices. This is reflected in the new Atom V and Zinc II devices as well as the UBiQUiO devices. In fact, you can get an overview of the Zinc II over at Gear Diary. Finally, they have established a distribution arm here in North America. Expansys, the United States division of Mobile Planet, is the exclusive distributor of MWg devices in this market making these devices readily available in an unlocked and low price fashion. Let us begin with a physical overview of Atom Life. As I mentioned before, this device is small when compared to other Windows Mobile device. It measures a scant 2.3" x 4.2" x .7" or 58mm x 108mm x 18.5mm (Width x Height x Depth) and weighs 5.1 ounces (145 grams). This device easily fits into any jeans, jacket or shirt pocket and does not give you a "weighed down" feeling. In fact you may not even notice it being there in a pant pocket! The Atom Life is only slightly taller than the original Xda Atom so you will find many accessories for them are interchangeable such as batteries and screen protectors. I found that the Boxwave USB docking cradle for my Atom works just fine with the Atom Life. The front of the device is dominated by the 2.7" transflective TFT QVGA display. To the right above the display is the video camera which can be used for video telelphony. Sadly no US carrier supports these calls but you can still use the camera when the camera function is activated. I will go into this in more detail later. Directly above the display is the silver mesh which is the phone speaker as well as LEDs to indicate signal, Bluetooth and WiFi enablement. To the left is the MWg logo which is quite clearly a sticker placed over the O2 logo which was on the device originally (Figure 2). Below the display is the circular D-Pad with a four-way directional pad surrounded by the Action button. The traditional Send and End buttons are on each side of the D-Pad with the display Softkeys above them and the Start and Windows Media buttons below them. Finally, on each side of the button layout are stereo speakers, making the Atom Life truly media friendly.
On the right side edge of the device are Camera/Video and Recorder buttons as well as the silo for the stylus to be stored. The Stylus is silver toned, like the sides of the Atom Life, and has some weight to it. This gives you a better sense of control with the stylus over lightweight plastic ones that come with most other devices. On the top edge of the Atom Life is the Power button as well as the MiniSD slot. When MWg updated the Atom Life ROM to Windows Mobile 6 they also updated the firmware for the MiniSD slot to allow for SDHC (Secure Digital High Capacity) cards to be used. MWg indicates on their website that the Atom Life only supports up to 2GB storage cards but I have used a 4GB card without any problem (Figure 8). Note that MWg and Clinton Fitch (Dot) Com! does not guarantee you will have the same success. Technically 2GB is the limit - I am merely reporting my own findings in my testing for this review. On the left side edge of the Atom Life you will find the volume up and down controls as well as the IrDA eye. With the proliferation of Bluetooth, very few devices come with IR ports today but it is nice to see it on those rare occasions where you could need it. Finally, the bottom edge of the device has the inset reset button, the MiniUSB connector and the 2.5mm stereo headset plug. All of the edges of the Atom Life are in silver tone, giving it a sleek, modern look.
The back of the Atom Life is smooth and is only interrupted by the 2.0 Megapixel camera. The camera supports up to 1600 x 1200 images, can shoot 320 x 240 MPEG4 videos, has a built-in flash and macro mode. I will go over the function of the camera as well as quality later in this review. Like the original Xda Atom, the Atom Life's back is a fingerprint magnet with its smooth, high gloss black finish. Some will find this unattractive but having used the Xda Atom for so long, it no longer bothers me. Frankly this small issue should not keep you away from this powerful device.
The back is also where the 1350mAh battery is located as well as the SIM slot which is under the battery. The battery life is good on the Atom Life and leaps ahead of the original Atom. With Bluetooth enabled and ActiveSync to my Exchange server and an hour of talk time, the battery lasted about 7 hours in my testing. When in standby mode the battery lasted about 120 hours. These figures are based on having the device's CPU running in Best Performance mode. If you adjust the device to automatically throttle back the CPU your battery life will improve. I gained nearly 3 more hours by having the device in auto mode. To adjust the CPU tap Start>Settings>System>CPU. You can adjust it for automatic adjustments, Best Performance or Best Power for ultimate battery life.
Looking over the specifications of the technology under the skin of the Atom Life is nothing short of impressive and is a package that few devices on the market can come close to matching. To begin, the device is powered by the Intel XScale PXA270 processor running at a blazing 624Mhz. This processing power makes the Atom Life zip through opening an closing applications but can be set to automatically adjust its speed based on the needs of the moment. Coupled with this processing power is a generous helping of ROM - a 1GB helping! The device has 1024MB of ROM with 795MB of it user accessible. With this configuration you can likely install all of your applications, have several Word or PowerPoint documents and other data without having to use a storage card. This is essentially how I use my Atom Life - all of my applications and data in ROM while my 4GB MiniSDHC card is my media card for music and videos. If there is one disappointment it is the amount of RAM installed in the Atom Life. It comes with 64MB with 45MB user accessible. While this is somewhat standard for most Windows Mobile devices, it would have been good to see more RAM to eliminate the need to shut down and start up applications.
The radio stack built into the Atom Life is impressive, offering a wide range of network and data connectivity. From a network perspective the device supports GSM 900/1800/1900 and UMTS 1900/2100. Data is supported via CSD, EDGE, UMTS and HSPDA. When using the T-Mobile network I had no issues related to signal or voice quality on my calls. T-Mobile's EDGE data network provided me an average of about 100Kbps on downloads. When using the AT&T network it did take several minutes for the device to find the network and signal strength was not as good. However UMTS data throughput was an impressive 800Kpbs on average. In addition the Atom Life supports 802.11b (11Mbit/sec) and 802.11g (54Mbit/sec) wireless connectivity as well as Bluetooth 1.2 and supports Bluetooth Stereo Audio Profile (A2DP). Finally, as mentioned before, the device supports IrDA 1.2 with a maximum transmit speed of 115Kbps. MWg includes an Auto Configurator wizard with the Atom Life but sadly it only works in Asia and Europe. Given that O2 originally intended the device for those markets and not the United States, I'm assuming that MWg did not update this for the US market. The built-in digital camera is a 2 Megapixel camera which supports up to 1600 x 1200 images as well as 320 x 240 MPEG4 or 3GPP video. When in video mode you can use either the camera in the back or the video camera on the front of the device to shoot photos or videos of yourself. This makes the front camera functional for those in the United States where video telephony is not supported by the carriers. The camera on the front of the Atom Life is not nearly as high in quality as the main cameras, able to only muster a 640 x 480 pixel image. It's important to remember however that this camera is designed for transmitting data over a GPRS network were quality is going to be hampered from the beginning.
The photo quality from the main camera of the Atom Life is good both indoors and out. I have always found the O2/MWg cameras better than those on HTC devices as they render colors more accurately in either lighting condition. I noticed both in the indoor and outdoor shot there is a bit of haze in the image. I verified the lens was clean and it made no difference. Note that the camera is fixed focus but does have a macro mode as well as a built-in light for low light situations.
Now that we have covered the hardware aspects of the MWg Atom Life, let's take a look at the software. Given that the device is based on Windows Mobile 6 Professional, I'm not going to cover the OS itself but rather focus on the applications that MWg includes with the device. The first of these is the Equalizer which is used when using the Atom Life as a MP3 player. The equalizer, as the name suggests, allows you to adjust the audio output to better suit the music style you are listening to on the device. From the Equalizer you can also adjust the WOW HD settings for a rich audio experience with the Atom Life. Note that the Equalizer application only works when you have the supplied stereo headset plugged into the device. Without question the Atom Life provides the richest sound experience I have had with a Windows Mobile device. In fact I prefer it over the Microsoft Zune or Creative Zen devices. Yes, it's that good!
While on the subject of audio, the Atom Life also has a built-in FM radio so you can listen to local radio either through the headset or the stereo speakers on the device. The FM radio can auto scan to find stations in your area. Once you have scanned the FM band, you can rename the stations to their call names to allow for easy identification and delete those that you do not want to listen to as well. The FM radio supports RDS so you can get song names and station Identification scrolling on the display. You can even record from the broadcast as well! The original Atom had a FM radio as well and I never was pleased with the audio quality. It was choppy and had a lot of background noise even when I was outdoors. With the Atom Life the audio quality and signal quality are far better with no noise even when indoors. As a final note on the FM radio, although you can listen to the audio through the device's speakers, you still have to connect the headset up to the device. This is because the headset acts as the antenna for the FM radio.
The new Image Editor application is a great simple photo editor which provides you basic functions to allow you to manipulate the image. Although not nearly as advanced as some editing applications, Image Editor will allow you to crop, add stamps to a picture, sharpen, distort, invert and even grey scale an image. For most editing on-the-fly, this application will do the trick until you can load up a more advanced application or get it copied to your desktop PC. Related to the Image Editor is the Media Album application included in the Atom Life. This application allows you to view individual images or a slide show of your images on the device. This is a great way to view your pictures and share with others.
An application that I always found help in O2 devices and now MWg is the Self Diagnostics. This application allows you to test virtually every system on the Atom Life which can be helpful for not only troubleshooting an issue with the device but for general health checkups as well. To use the tool, check the various items you want to test by tapping the box next to them then tap Menu>Run. The Atom Life will perform the required tests, some of which will require your interaction, to verify that all is well. Once you complete the tests you will be prompted to soft reset the device to clear out any residual test data in memory.
In addition to these applications, the Atom Life has a Streaming Media application which allows you to view streaming video from a RTSP site, ClearVue PDF for PDF reading, JBlend to run Java applications and Remote Desktop to allow you to access remote PCs via GPRS or a wireless network. Remote Desktop is not included in many devices today so it is nice to see it here on the Atom Life. Hopefully now you can see the power and performance of the MWg Atom Life. This small device packs an impressive punch from a performance and storage perspective. MWg has also included a nice set of applications which function well and in most cases will eliminate the need for users to purchase 3rd party ones to do the job. Battery life on the Atom Life is good but could be better and the 2MP camera is passable. With all of this said however, the Atom Life has become my primary device. The size is fantastic and it is never sluggish on performance. The fact I can install all of my applications and data on the device without having to use a storage card is wonderful! During the writing of this review, MWg released what is likely to be the last ROM update for the Atom Life. This new ROM addresses some issues and improves the radio stack a bit. Given that the Atom V is on its way, do not expect to see Windows Mobile 6.1 on the Atom Life. The MWg Atom Life is available through a variety of retailers and here in the United States at Expansys. The device is unlocked and is $399.95, a great price for the power and performance. Even better - Expansys accepts PayPal! What I Like: What I Don't Like: Rating (1-5): 4 |
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