I’ve been playing around with the thought of finally getting myself a new toy. I was thinking about buying a Dopod 818 Pro. Is not the time or will I regret my purchase in a few weeks when an even greater gadget is out on the market?
I wouldn’t buy one simply because of the name.
Come on people. Let’s get some creativity.
I have one and it’s a great little device, but the audio quality isn’t great for voice calls and it’s not 3G for data. I’ve also got the next model up - not sure what the Dopod name is - which had 3G, better audio quality on voice calls, a keyboard, a scroll wheel and some other cool features, but it’s thicker, heavier and more expensive…
Exactly. And how do you pronounce it? Is it DOEpod or DOOpod?
It really is a dumb name. Something related to dumb Dodo birds and extinction and Ipod knock off name. Nothing good there at all, even small conjurings of turds in the name. HCT/ Dopod marketing department leaves a little to be desired.
Can you get the 818 with an English operating system? Last time I checked this was not available in Taiwan and you need to buy the Atom o2 or some other rebrand. I have the Atom and am almost happy with it but would get the slide out keyboard model/ version in another brand next time at a better price.
[quote]High Tech Computer, the Taiwanese ODM that has long been the world’s leading developer of Windows smart phones, announced on Friday that it is taking control of one of its customers, an outfit called Dopod International. HTC has been one of the hottest electronics companies in Taiwan
The stock market hasn’t taken the news well: HTC stock dropped 7% today. That still leaves HTC up 57% for the year and almost five times higher than June 2005, but there’s reason to worry. Everyone in the industry knows that Dopod and HTC have had strong connections -[color=blue] HTC’s chairwoman, Cher Wang, was a key investor in Dopod.[/color] But by making the relationship formal, and turning Dopod into a subsidiary, HTC has now entered the brand-name business. That’s something that has gotten other Taiwanese ODMs into trouble.[/quote]
[quote]
The experiment almost ended in failure. In 1997,[color=blue] Cher Wang, daughter of one of Taiwan’s richest men, petrochemicals billionaire Y.C. Wang[/color], launched a design and manufacturing outfit in Taipei with a difference. It aimed to offer what was then a unique product for executives on the go–a gizmo that was both personal digital assistant and mobile phone.[/quote]
According to the TV adverts it is a Doooo Pod not a Dough Pod.
Dope? Odd?
Doo-doo pod?
I like their TyTAn and mEtEor names as well.
Very unlike the Taiwanese to spoil something eminently sensible and useful with childish names. it doesn’t matter anyway, because English (if that’s what it’s supposed to be) is just a joke anyway and not to be taken seriously.
I really do wonder how many of their target market of sombre businessmen and 30-something geeks have taken a look at the names of the new products and gone “Urg. No way.”
The 13-year olds market with whom these names may be popular do not normally spend seven hundred quid on a phone. You see them on the net baulking at spending ten euro to flash their Ericssons and Nokias.
So how bad is the sound quality? Would you recommend not to buy it? I intend to use a smart phone, first and foremost as a phone and then as a PDA as with the age my memory gets worse. If phone quality is not good, then Dopod is out.
Give the Motorola Ming PDA phone a thought. It is hot also, around 12.500 NT, can be used with GPS etc… If you look for a big PDA screen, than you better stick to the the Dopod or similar, but most PDA size phones do have a low sound quality.
I considered buying a Dopod myself, but gave up as the overall quality seemed to be underperforming other a -brands.
Thanks for all your replies. Would you geeks consider a Nokia N80 at all? Somehow I don’t like Motorola, but I’ll have a look at it. Thanks
The sound quality doesn’t suck, but it’s not as good on mine as you get on better mobile phones. It’s slightly digital sounding, although for some reason this isn’t the case if you use the headset.
The Dopod 818 is not the same device as the O2 Atom, please don’t get these confused as the 818 offers built in 802.11 b/g WiFi which can be really useful. It’s not quite fast enough to use for Skype though.
wiki.xda-developers.com/index.ph … HTC_Hermes
This is the 818 Pro wiki.xda-developers.com/index.ph … TC_Prophet which is the other one I have, although both on Orange in the UK, don’t bother with the none Pro version as it doesn’t have WiFi, although it’s slightly faster.
The Atom is not made by HTC
Thanks, LostSwede.
I got a thanks!?! 
Go for the new CHT 9000. It just came out. It might be the one that Lost Swede has. I use to have an 818, my wife has the 818 Pro and I use the 838 at the moment but about to upgrade to this CHT 9000. Saw a guy the other day in a coffeeshop plugged in from his phone to his laptop surfing the internet. I suppose if his PC had bluetooth he wouldn’t have had to use a wire. Anyway, the CHT 9000 is 3G with a sliding keyboard. The older 3G model has a mini laptop look to it, and it was too big. This CHT 9000 is the size of the 838 with sliding keyboard and it has a new CPU. I think 838 sells for around NT$20K like the new CHT 9000, but I will sell my 838 for only NT$8,500 if you are interested. If you don’t like that, I got a Sony Ericsson P900 I will sell you for NT$6,500. It is also English version.
Keep your phone collection up to date like I do by leaving your new phones in the back of taxis. When it says NT$9,500 for that new phone, don’t forget it really means NT$19,000 because you’ll have to buy two of them.
Thanks, just saw the CHT9000 on the dopod website and it seems to be great toy. Why would I have to buy two of them??
Beacuse you’ll leave the first one in the back of a Taxi 
The new model has built in modem support and you can set it up over Bluetooth or the USB cable and it will act as a 3G modem and it can do HSDPA if your network supports it.
I really like it, although it is quite heavy compared to the 818 Pro.
I’m finally thinking about jumping on the pda phone bandwagon. I’ve been looking at various models online and it looks like the HTC TyTN/Hermes/Dopod 838Pro/Dopod CHT9000 (same phone, many many names) is closest to what I want. I noticed a couple of you already have one. Did yours come with an English or Chinese version of Windows Mobile? I can see that the ROMs are upgradeable so I could change over to an English ROM but it looks like a pain to do. Is the Pocket IE web browser still so brain dead that Opera is a better choice? What service providers do you guys use, and how much do you typically spend in one month? Anyone using ssh on one of these things?
Might want to wait for the Nokia N95, supposed to be released early next year.
N95 has no QWERTY keyboard.