Andrew Grant

Like most phones these days my Cingular 3125 (aka, HTC StarTrek, aka QTek 8500) uses a combined headphone/charging port preventing the use of regular 3.5mm headphones.

What’s less common is that it’s impossible to get a simple headphone adapter for it. The only adapters I can find have an 80cm long cable ending in a combined volume control/3.5mm socket. When you add in the length of your regular headphones that’s a serious amount of cable!

The 3125 is a pretty decent media player and great for places like the gym. I decided to I’d take the headphones that came with the phone and perform a little surgery to make my own compact adapter

Requirements;

• A 3.5mm Jack from Radio Shack (~$2)
• A soldering iron and basic skills
• Fine wire strippers
• A set of helping hands
• Patience

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In Windows Vista, Windows Mobile Device Center is the new way to create partnerships with mobile devices and synchronize items such as contacts, calendar appointments and email with Outlook.

My first attempts to use Windows Mobile Device Center resulted in a lot of problems. Neither my T-Mobile MDA (aka Cingular 8125, aka HTC Wizard) or my Cingular 3125 (aka HTC StarTrek) would synchronize with Outlook 2003. Instead the synchronization would fail with with an unhelpful error of “The Server Is Busy”.

Some Googling showed me other people with Vista having similar problems, but no solutions, so I thought I’d post the steps that got things working for me.

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On TechCrunch yesterday I read about AllFreeCalls, a service which allows you to make international calls for the price of a long-distance call to Iowa. Since $100 of my last phone bill consisted of calls to the UK, this was just too good to ignore.

After dialing the Iowa number I was then prompted to dial my international number as normal, E.g. 011 44 131 555 5555 – An international call to the UK, City of Edinburgh, number 555-5555. It worked perfectly!

The downside of this service (apart from its undoubtedly short life expectancy) is you need to dial a heck of a lot of numbers, and if you don’t have peoples numbers committed to memory it becomes even more awkward.

Luckily there’s a trick, one I used to use to automatically dial through to regularly called extensions.

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A day later I’m also feeling less impressed by the iPhone. It’s a beautiful device, and will surely sell millions, but it certainly has a few problems that will make me think twice about purchasing it.

What’s great about it though? It has a standard 3.5mm audio jack.

My last five phones have ranged from ‘ok’ to ‘good’ for playing music, but all have come with non-standard headphone jacks. Instead of being able to use your own headphones, you’re invariably stuck with the cheap effort bundled with your phone, or with having to buy (and not lose) an adaptor.

My T-Mobile MDA certainly has the capacity and software to be a great little music player for short, or even long, trips. But instead, I usually pack my Nano. Not only can I then use noise-canceling headphones if I’m flying, but I only have to pack one set of headphones.

Bravo Apple. Other phone vendors, take note.

I’d been considering either a SmartPhone or Pocket PC Phone for sometime when my regular phone (an Ericsson K750) expired. I’d had a PDA previously and while being extremely handy it was a little too cumbersome to carry around in addition to a regular phone, wallet, keys etc.

Technology has moved on however and there are now Smartphone’s available that are the same size as regular models, and Pocket PC Phones only a little larger. The T-Mobile MDA is from the HTC Wizard family and weighs in at around 160g with dimensions of 108 x 58 x 24mm. This makes it a little larger than my K750, but smaller than most PDA’s on the market and a size that easily slips into a trouser pocket without creating a somewhat embarrassing bulge.

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