Basic Features

The Dash 3G supports myFaves, T-Mobile's unlimited calling service. Customers can pick their five favorite friends and call them for free any time. MyFaves eliminates domestic roaming or long-distance charges for those five people as well.

Pictures or icons will appear just below the digital clock on the home menu and are readily available for one-touch calling, text messaging, email and photo sharing.

However, unlike the Snap, the Dash does not offer HTC's Inner Circle option. Inner Circle allows people to pre-select a list of people whose emails are most important to them. When the Inner Circle button is pressed (this button, obviously, is absent from the Dash keypad), emails from those individuals rise to the top of a Snap user's inbox.

The option is helpful for people that get a lot of junk mail or have important clients they want to hear from and respond to immediately, but could end up causing a person to ignore an email that may end up being timely from a person not included in their Inner Circle.

The Dash and the Snap have similar messaging, Internet and document reading technology and the two models look alike, but the handset is slightly larger and has an easier-to-use trackball for navigation. Its keypad is also slightly bigger than those on the Snap.

The Dash includes a main menu tab devoted to music -- the Snap does not. Each has instant access to Web sites, but the Dash has more instant links.

Meanwhile, the Snap has a software store that doesn't require Internet access and offers TV and video channels for an added fee -- services the Dash does not have.

The Dash 3G supports voice dialing, speed dial, speakerphone and Bluetooth options.

Users can download wallpapers or use a picture taken on the 2.0-megapixel camera for wallpaper, use the phone as a music or video player, play games, instant message, check personal and work email, record voice notes and send text, picture and video messages.

The handset can sync files with a personal computer, edit Microsoft Office documents, sync with a Microsoft Office Outlook email account, deliver GPS directions, surf the Web, and store extra files on a microSD card, sold separately.

The Dash 3G includes basic features like an address book, alarm clock, calculator, task manager, calendar, search Google maps, send an audio postcard (an audio clip recorded on and with the phone), and view PDF documents through Adobe Reader LE and Java applications.

It has numerous helpful features that keep people connected and entertained. A world clock and tip calculator would be helpful, though, and the usefulness of having a myFaves bar as the first item in the home menu list after the clock is questionable since the tool is an optional part of a call plan.

Screen

The Dash 3G's 2.4-inch screen is slightly larger than the screen on the Snap. The black outline Dash 3G's screen makes a big difference in making images pop, no small feet with just 65K-colors. Most handsets these days offer 262K-colors.

Icons are easy to see and font easy for most to read. Videos and pictures come in clear and colorful.

One gripe, however, is how quickly the screen fades and then turns to black. Practically looking away and then looking back is long enough to make the screen darken.

The Dash 3G's screen is a good size, easy to read and does the best it can with the colors it has. It could, though, benefit from a longer standby time before fading to black and 262K-color capability.

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