ETEN M500: New Equipment Blog - Day 04

One of our Contributing Editors asked me why I downgraded my PPC Phone today. He claimed that will 1/2 the RAM and half the processor speed (the M500's default speed is 200MHz), I had given up most of what I gained with the HTC Blue Angel. The only thing I gained, according to him, was a guarenteed WM5 upgrade.

To an extent, he's right, but in many ways, he's wrong. Yes, the M500 only has 64MB of RAM, and yes, I notice the difference; but I'm trying to look upon this as a temporary situation, with WM5 just around the corner.

Yes, the M500's default CPU speed is 200MHz, but it surprised me at how zippy it actually is at that speed. In many ways, its faster than my x50v, at 624MHz. Using XCPUScaler, I can tweak the processor to 500MHz if I need or want, so I'm not worried at all about this.

The device is seriously lacking in the hardware button department. To help with this, I installed Vito Button Mapper, so I have push and hold functionality on all of my buttons, not just the Record button (which the M500 has by default). However, I am still missing some of the buttons that the Blue Angel has. I keep looking for the dedicated Start and OK buttons. Unfortunately, I will never have either; and Vito Button Mapper doesn't support a third button configuration ( 2x click). This is the only serious limitation that I've found with the M500: one hand operation is going to be completely OS dependent (on WM5).

All in all, this device is seriously growing on me, and I'm glad I have it...at least so far...