Reviewing the T-Mobile Dash

Sure, this isn't the most timely of reviews. After all, the T-Mobile Dash has been around for months now. Thing is, though, that my Dash keeps giving me new reasons to write about it...

Few months ago, my wife's cell phone died and, since she's not as nerdly as I am, she volunteered to take my phone and let me buy a fancy new one (any wonder why I love this woman?). Anyway, soon as she said that, I ran over to the local T-Mobile store so I could scope out new toys before she had a chance to change her mind. Ended up walking out with the T-Mobile Dash.

Overall, the phone's ranked somewhere between "OK" and "Pretty Good" for me. I like the size, feel, and features (when they work, see below). The screen's pretty and sharp, the QWERTY keyboard works surprisingly well (even for we fat-fingered folks), etc., but there are a few things that annoy me about it. For starters:

1. The placement of the volume strip. The volume controls on the side of the Dash, right where my index and middle fingers go when I'm holding it during a normal conversation. For the first couple of weeks I had the bloody thing, I kept accidentally turning the volume up and down in the middle of calls. It has some sensitivity settings, but those never worked well for me. Ended up disabling it.
2. The headset that comes with it. T-Mobiles throws one of those stereo headsets in the Dash box where the cord for one ear is longer than the other. No idea why anybody would ever want that. Is the idea that you can share the headset with someone else while you're listening to MP3s or something? Just ends up getting tangled up all the time. I've nearly thrown the thing out the car window several times as I've frantically tried to unwind it to take a call. Would use the speaker phone feature, but...
3. The speaker phone sucks. Horrendous sound quality. Can barely hear what people on the other end of the phone are saying (and vice versa).
4. Flaky wireless. I'm too cheap to pay the $19.95/mo that T-Mobile demands to use their Internet access, so the only time I browse on this phone is when I'm within range of my own Wi-Fi network at the house. When it works, it works well. Problem is that it's inconsistent. And I don't mean inconsistent the same way Wi-Fi connections are always inconsistent.For example, on the main screen, there's a spot that usually lists the status of the Wi-Fi connection. When you've turned it off, it says "Wi-Fi: Off" and when you're connected to a network is lists the SSID of the WLAN. I use the default setting that says it should turn off the Wi-Fi adapter if it can't establish a connection within a certain amount of time. However, sometimes it will go through the connection routine as though everything is hunky dory, but I won't be able to browse. I can usually tell when that's happening because the status screen says "Wi-Fi: " instead of "Wi-Fi: Off" or "Wi-Fi: ". When it happens, I have to turn the phone off and on.
5. Flaky SSMS. My wife and I trade text messages all day, so it really gets on my nerves when my phone misbehaves. From time to time, it just won't let me access any of the messages in the various folders. I click on one and nothing at all happens, but other features still work just fine. Again, only way I've found to fix it is to reboot the phone. Guess I should expect those reboots... After all, it IS running Windows...

Today, though, this thing took its random goofiness to a new level. I had just finished typing out a text message to my wife and, when I pushed the "Send" button, my Dash gave me this message:

Sorry about the poor quality. Had to throw the phone on a scanner to capture the image and, needless to say, scanners aren't exactly designed to scan LCD screens. If you can't read it, it says "The phone is currently off. Would you like to turn on the phone?"

Talk about your Catch-22's. If the phone is off, how the hell is it giving me a message that says "the phone is currently off?!" It's like when you get an email from customers/end-users informing you that email's down. Does not compute.