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Live View with DX review/thoughts

Turbod

Member
I have been waiting for someone with a DX to try the Sony Ericsson Live View, but searches turned up nothing so I bit the bullet and ordered one up. Thought I would give a little review just in case there is anyone else thinking about getting one. The DX isnt listed as an approved compatible device, but after a day and a half of use, it works completely as advertised. It is a nice sized device for what it does, screen is easy to read, although I havent had a chance to test it in direct sunlight due to snowy weather. Although the provided watch band works well, I think its pretty ugly, so I went and purchased a cheap standard black replacement for a casio (20mm if you are looking to get one). I purchased the Live View through Amazon, was a little over $100, not to thrilled about that, but it shipped quickly. Since it has only been released in Europe, it has a European wall charger, so that is something that will have to be addressed, but it is a micro usb, so not much of a problem there. It seems that you can not charge the device while in watch strap because of access to the port, although its easy to pop off from the strap, it is something that should have been designed better. There is an LED on the side of the top left button to notify you of notifications. I am not terribly impressed with the placement of that because you cant see it unless that corner happens to be pointing towards you, and it only flashes a few times per notification. It does vibrate though, and that function seems to work well as I have yet to miss a notification. The biggest complaints I saw in reviews were consistent disconecting and battery life. I have not had a single disconnect issue as of yet. I pulled the device off of the charger at 7 am, it is now 10pm and I still have full bars on my battery life.

So far, I really like the device. It is easy to setup and use.
-Text messages are easy to scroll through and if you click the open icon at the bottom, the next time you unlock your phone, it will be open to that message and ready to go.
-Calendar appointments show up as an alert
-Incoming calls show up with the phone number
-There is a missed call list
-It will pull your Facebook comments, msgs, etc... and a set time interval. I am not really impressed with this now that FB has push to Android. I would like to see this program updated to use push notifications to send you instant updates like the FB app on our phones does. It does have the open icon on bottom of message to command your phone to open the web page up for a more detailed view.
-Rss feeds are able to be setup on a pull interval also. I use google reader, so this isnt a feature that I would use. But I did test it, and it works well. Also has ability to open link on phone.
-I dont have a Twitter account, so I didnt test that, but I imagine it would be no different than the rest.

I have downloaded a few of the plugins to use.
-PowerAMP is a media control program. It allows you to play, pause, track fwd/back, and volume up/down. I have tested it with the stock media player, Pandora, and Slacker, and it works well with all of them.
-Gmail, allows you to read email on the device (text only of course)
-Calendar plugin gives you more calendar functionality on device. I can actually see the days and agenda with this, where the stock plugin only sees an appointment when its that time.
-Viewfinder. This one isnt working on the DX, but I am hoping it will be updated to. It allows you to control camera functions such as zoom and take picture with watch, even shows you what camera is seeing.

I will continue to post a few more updates as I have more time with the device. One bug I noticed today, during the 12:00 hour, it showed up as 0:00 in the plugins, but normal time displayed in watch mode. Feel free to ask if you have any questions.
 
WARNING, Live View Application software update 1.0.a.0.14 breaks functionality of the Live View device with Droid X. I managed to get a hold of the previous version 1.0.a.0.13 and restore functionality. There was also a firmware update for the device itself, I have had very little time with it, so I don't have much to say yet. I still enjoy the device, but battery life is erratic, it will go 3 days or 6 hours on a charge. I have yet to figure out what is causing it to be so erratic, but maybe the firmware update corrected that. If you need the older software for the Application, send me a PM.

Sent from my DROIDX using DroidForums App
 
UPDATE: Been running the new device firmware for a little over a week now, and battery life has significantly improved! It now goes about 5 days on a full charge. That and it now shows time correctly in the 12:00 hours instead of it saying 0:00. Hopefully the next release of the Live View Application software will fix its communication problem with the X, but for now the old software is working for me.

Sent from my DROIDX using DroidForums App
 
I tried looking every where for the older version of the app. Can you upload it for the other users who cannot find it. Plus I PM'd. I just purchased the Liveview. And I own a Droid X. Thanks.
 
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