It's official, I just 86'ed my 7100g phone for a Audiovox 5600. I couldn't hang with the crappy mic on the 7100g. You know, I gotta make phone calls with it. Well anyway, just wanted to let people know how my switch was.

I think the only thing that the audiovox lacks is the qwerty keyboard that the 7100g has. Which makes email and sms a breeze. Also, the 5600 may not have as many customizable features as the 7100g such as the hot keys on the keyboard instead of scrolling and hitting the window icons. Other than that, it's a pretty good phone with many similar features as the 7100g and it is a smaller size phone.

Things I liked:

7100g:

qwerty keyboard
scrolling side wheel
functionality
big screen
programmable mess/voice/email light if wanted.



5600:

size is super small for pocket action instead of the gay fanny pack belt holster.
Mic works well in loud areas
Has all the basic features the 7100 has.
Different home page layout (you can change the way the home page is setup)
Ease of use.


Things I disliked:

7100g:

Mic sucks balls.

Cant change the home page layout. Like who cares about enterprise server, get it out of the way!!

Buttons suck. The green and red calling buttons are way too small. I should be able to feel my way through the keyboard. Center key should have a bigger dot so that I know it is center. Keys should be spaced out better or pop up a little more.

I get a delayed ring for some reason?? It vibrates 2 times first then rings on the 3rd ring therefore I have one more ring before it goes to voicemail?? Whats up with dat?? My default is ring/vibrate should do it at the same time.

Size is way too big and thick. At least make it thinner. This is not 2000 anymore. This size was acceptable back when bb 1st came out but not now.

The earpiece ergonomics hurt my ear, ouch!!! They should bend it in a little.



5600:

The contacts need to have a search feature. I sit on the freeway alot and drive while accessing this thing. So, I need a phone that finds things fast.

Need hot keys to access different main files or common tasks. I like the 7100g delete feature button. 5600 needs sometihng similar to delete emails fast. I'm like james bond so I gotta delete top secret emails/sms/calls fast.

When you lock the phone I can barely see the screen when I touch a button. You gotta unlock it first to see it completely.

t9 sooo old school compared to the 7100 qwerty.



Overall, I think the 7100g is a very good phone except the mic sucks ass. I would of kept it but like I said earlier, I have to make phone calls every once in a while. The Audiovox seemed like the next comparable thing without going up in size. The 7290 is just way too gay for me. Like who carries a brick??? But when the Electron comes out or the Moto Q, I may give QWERTY another try. QWERTY is really good compared to t9 IMO. It makes t9 look ancient.

j--

i just did the exact opposite as you, switching from a cingular audiovox 5600 to a 7100t and doing away with the cingular service all together, moving to Tmobile. I agree that the 5600 is a nice phone. After 3 weeks of using the 7100t i must say that it is better in almost every aspect than the 5600. If you primarily use the device as a phone then you may be happier than the blackberry, but I use mine for email, web browsing, etc. The built in email client on the 5600 is just plain crap. I never could get gmail to work on it, look around on the net many others are having the exact same problems. I had to download another email client just to get my gmail but downloading of messages was so slow that i stopped using it for email altogether (took 45 minutes to download 15 messages none of which were over 100K). I hope you do not have the same problem, or maybe cingular has fixed this by now. I found a post on modaco.com that it was a problem with the built in client and could not be fixed until an updated rom was released, which none ever was. Typing on the 5600 is very painful dont type anything longer than a few words or it will take you 5 minutes. Also, the user interface is extrememly slow, if you think the blackberry 7100 is slow, just wait until you get several 3rd party apps installed on this and try to open anything, it will take 30 seconds just to open an app. The 5600 does have a couple benefits over the 7100 though, one being that it has a expansion bay for a mini SD card. The other that the phone portion works a little easier than the 7100t. Other than that the blackberry is superior hands down. Even the calendar, address book, tasks, etc on the 5600 are highly limited and I believe that the blackberry pim is much better than the smartphone OS pim. All in all im happy i switched, i have used a treo 600, smt 5600 and the 7100t all in the last year. The treo is prob the most versatile, the 5600 is small which is nice, but for me the 7100 wins because of email being MY killer app, and nothing does email like a blackberry. The 5600 is a pretty nice cell phone but if you want to do more than just very basic pda type stuff i doubt you will be happy with it for very long. Just my .02 cents. Also, my advice is if you want to do any web browsing ditch the built in pocket IE and download opera for windows smartphone. It is much faster and can open regular html sites, the built in IE browser only supports wap, and doesnt do a very good job at opening anything. I would be interested to see what you think of it compared to your 7100 after a month or so of use. BTW, i had similar problems of bad service with cingular. I have not had many problems after ditching them and going with tmobile, they have better service in my area, and the mic on my 7100t seems to be fine, so far....

Also, you can change the home page layout on the 7100. There are several themes you can download on these forums. You can hide enterprise server by doing an Alt + wheel click and choose hide icon, you can also move them all around to be in any order you want them to be.

Tip - to search for a contact on your 5600 just start typing the first few letters of the first or last name from the home screen and it will automatically start looking and display a list based on name or phone number. Also you note that on the blackberry it vibrates first then starts ringing, you can change this by going into the active profile and editing it.

7100g is a really good phone. The only reason I switched phones is cuz the phone didn't work. Kind of basic but I guess they didn't figure it out.

The SMT5600 is an outstanding smartphone. So is the MPx220. I had both. Chose whether you like candybar or flip. I wanted email and that is what I got. I think the SMT5600 or MPx220 make a better phone, but the 7100G is more than adequate to my needs. Good luck!

I have a 7100g and the phone works great! No mic problems. Hmmm.

Talk on it when there is background noise. ex: convertible car, bowling alley, bar, strip bar, freeway,etc..... Then you'll notice that your callers wont be able to understand what you are saying. I just so happen to use my phone in most of the above places and they couldn't hear me. Other than that libraries and quiet atmospheres the phone works great.