Pantech Matrix Pro Smartphone Review

This is my review of the Pantech Matrix Pro, a Windows Mobile 6.1 Standard smartphone offered by AT&T.

Pantech Matrix Pro Smartphone Review Hi guy’s this is Jason Dunn from Smart Phone Thoughts and I am here with my review of the AT&T Pantech Matrix Pro. So I did an unboxing earlier and I am in fact using this phone full time as my phone for a little bit over a month - almost two months actually. And my opinions on the phone in general are that - this is an interesting, it has some interesting benefits. But they are some snags that you want to be aware off when you are using the device. Now I got to say, I totally like the dual keypads here, on my phone - for a lot of a time I could just pop out on the phone. And just start typing a name or a number or whatever and I could get my - get the contact up really quickly, I really quite like that. Now the keyboard sliding over, you are going to see - that is one of the things I didn’t like so I going to kind of do that again. And it takes too long to kind of flip over, so that was one of the things that didn’t necessary like. Is that if you flip the keyboard and you start punching buttons right away - it wouldn’t always register. Because the operating system was - the harder rather was turning to try to do this - the screen rotation. So I got to admit it, I am jealous in all of how quickly the iPhone will rotate to landscape mode or whatever. And I just really want to see Windows Mobile devices do better but it is not really the end of the world. Now in terms of the keyboard, I was kind of iffy on the keyboard; I will be honest with you like I always am. The keyboard, when you start using it, it is not awful but compared to a cordy keyboard on something like the Samsung Black Jack - like a vertical style phone. Where the keys have more space, this keyboard is definitely not quite as good, so they do make a bit of sacrifice to kind of get it to be not too long. Like, I am sure you know if they extended it out another half an inch or something they could have more space in between the keys. But that would have the phone overall quite bigger so you do sort of pay for the convenience of having two keyboards. Now speaking of that, there is the thickness issue, now originally I thought this was actually going to bug me quite a bit. Because I look at and thought this is thing is just freaking huge, it is so thick. But honestly carrying into my hand or carrying it to my pocket, I didn’t really notice it. Now, well I like it to be thinner - absolutely, I would love it if it was able to have two keyboards, and be thinner. But when you do go with a dual sliding design like this, you are going to make some sacrifices and one of the sacrifices is going to end up being thicker than your average phone. In terms of call quality and network reception, I am located in Canada and that is where I was testing this phone. So now this is an AT&T phone as I mentioned, you might be thinking “how the hell does that work?” AT&T or rather this phone was unlocked for me so I was able to use a SIM card for my Canadian GMS carrier. And that allowed me to use the phone here, I had no connection issues, it connected of 3G brilliantly. I didn’t have any issues with drop calls; call quality was really good so I don’t really have any complaints about that at all. I used the camera a little bit, the camera is pretty good it is not fantastic but it is pretty good. One of the things I really wish that they would have change. I came from using a Samsung Jack which is a Samsung Black Jack2 and on that phone the little D pad. You can actually rotate it and I am - one of the kinds of the weird things was that. I look at this and I kept expecting it, I wanted to rotate with it and so I had to really train myself to stop doing that because even though it looks like you should be able to rotate - you can't. So you have to actually go up and down, left and right etc. so I kind of wish that they would have done that. One of the other things I really wasn’t to fond of is this, this is the completely and totally proprietary custom plug. I just like custom plug, so what this means is that, you have to use their power adaptor and their sync cable. Because it is not a standard Mini USB connector and honestly that just makes me grumpy. They were couple of situations where I didn’t have this particular charger with me. I think it was actually a sync cable and I couldn’t do what I need to do because I didn’t have the right cable. So that was really irritating, I really wish that AT&T had told Pantech. Mini USB are death right that is the only connection that we are going to support. So that is one thing to be aware of, now another kind of specific issue and also a big cavy up. Because this phone is really only available on AT&T, this is going to be an issue for basically anyone but me or anyone that gets this phone and tries to unlock it. I going to suggest that you do not do that don’t get this phone and try to unlock it. If you get it and you are on the AT&T network - sweet, you will not have any problems. But if you do like I did, you are going to have some problems, what I am talking about? There's two particular issues, the first issue is that when I tried to use the internet sharing application And what this is, this allows tethering the phone to your Netbook or your Notebook and using it as a modem to get internet acces. Anywhere you go, great feature right? Absolutely, I love that feature in Windows Mobile - all you iPhone users you kind of missed out. This is excellent feature, but here is the problem is the network connections that we are basically you tell it which connection you want to use. It is hard coded to AT&T, so even though I have programmed in my own network connection. And even though I have a 3G connection, this will not allow you to pick a different connection, I probably could fix it if I decided to jump in the registry and hack around a bit but I didn’t feel like doing that. And I should have to do that, so this is sort of one of those bizarre AT&T things where again only someone who are of their network would run into problems. But that is something to be aware off. The same thing actually happened whenever I powered down the phone like I actually powered it off and turn it back ON again. The internet connection will go back to the AT&T one, so either to go in manually change it before I could do act or sync or anything. So not a huge show stopper but again, I don’t why AT&T or why Pantech decided to do that. Because it makes it pretty irritating, if you are on AT&T, you really won’t have a problem but just for example, let’s say you decide to take this and go outside the country. You go to Europe, you come to Canada, wherever you decide to get a different SIM, you want to do some roaming. It is just basically a big headache and I wish that AT&T and Pantech had not done that. Another thing that AT&T and Pantech did was really lock down this phone. There is a Twitter App for this phone that I actually could not get installed without doing some kind of registry hacking. So AT&T and Pantech applied really heavy security layer on this phone that makes installing applications a little bit more difficult. Users of this phone had trouble installing the new Microsoft Facebook app for instance. It wouldn’t go on really at all, I think Microsoft has released an update now and you can get it on but again a really weird thing. So the phone is very sort of heavy handed in that way and I don’t really like it when carriers get heavy handed. Now, enough doing all the negative, in terms of a day to day use phone. I definitely like it, there is lot to like - again the performance is pretty good. When you are moving around from app to app, I used it with the Windows Live Search App, I am using the built in GPS work like a charm. The GPS worked really well, everything about the phone, works quite good. But there are just some minor issues that you would want to be aware of, in terms of battery life. I would say it is about average for a 3G phone, I would use it for kind of two to three days with sort of day to day use before I had to recharge it. Which is fantastic but that is what average for Windows Mobile 3G phones. Like I mentioned, I really did like the dual sliding keyboard, I like the fact that I had a Micro SD card slot. I can load in a card and do some music, it is still Windows Mobile 6.1 which for a lot of people getting very aged. If you want to do any kind of multi media playback, you got to go and get core player or a better player. Because the Windows Media Player Mobile on this pretty much sucks, so there are some issues around that. But overall it is not a very expensive phone depending on what you do, I think you can get in AT&T for about $199.00 with a two year contract. It is not very pricey, if you are looking for a phone that has a cordy keyboard but also has the speed and easy of use of a T9 style. A 12 key keyboard, this phone is definitely worth considering, so overall if I was to rate it out. I would give it probably about seven out of 10, it is a good solid phone but you definitely want to be on the AT&T network. If you are going to use it, because again there are some glitchy issues for those of us that are not on AT&T. But that is my review on the phone this has been Jason Dunn from Smart Phone Thoughts, if you have any questions, feel free to post them - thanks for watching.