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No Apple Smartphone, so which one?

echeck

echeck

macrumors 68000
Original poster
It would be awesome if Apple released a Smartphone, but deep down inside I just don't see it happening. I think any phone Apple releases will just be an iPod nano with phone capabilities.

So with this in mind, I need to stop waiting for a non-existant product and make a purchase. So which one?

My carrier is Verizon, and I don't want to spend any more than $350USD (with my new phone discount), so I've narrowed my choices down to three.

Samsung i730 - $299
Motorola Q - $299
Treo 650 - $349

I would love some input from folks that might have these phones, or at least have played with them. 😉

Any and all comments are greatly appreciated.

Thanks!
 
I'm not in the market yet, but I will be soon. Can someone comment on Mac compatibility for these models? I know I can look it up with Google, but personal experience sometimes tells a different story than what's written on the box. So can any of these sync iCal and Address Book? Over bluetooth?
 
Apple has a list of phones that support iSync, but I don't know how updated that list is.

The i730 is the most attractive, but I hate the fact that it has Windows Mobile OS on it.
 
Treo 650

I've got a Treo 650. It comes with palm desktop that kinda bolts onto iSync and works fine. I had a sonyericsson p910 preveously which needed no additional software to sync.
as a PDA the treo is much better but the phone function is not so intuitive. Sonyericsson p990 would be a good bet allthough it may not yet be supported in iSync.
As for a windows smart phone, I think my iMac would grow leggs and walk out on me of i got one of them 🙄
 
All of the experience i have had with Samsung/Motorola phones (given none of them smart phones) will lead me to advise you to stay away. They are very backwards and lack that ease of use we desire. There is little to no mac compatability with these phones. I would steer clear.

I have never had a treo so can not comment.

By far the best expereinces i have ha are with Sony Ericsson phones and this looks like a very attractive phone http://www.sonyericsson.com/spg.jsp?cc=gb&lc=en&ver=4000&template=pm1_1&zone=pm&mcid=58. Admittidly no guarnteed mac support yet but from previous expereince you can either edit a .plist entry to get it or a plugin.

Edit: Just had a look for the specific plugin i use/used to get my K800 working but unfortunately i found this http://mobile.feisar.com/forum/index.cgi?fid=11&topic_id=1152642167. So you can have limited compatability.
 
Don't get the Samsung

Samsung has no support whatsoever for OS X, so stay away. Motorolas work good. Sony Ericsson's work great!
 
evilgEEk said:
The i730 is the most attractive, but I hate the fact that it has Windows Mobile OS on it.
Click to expand...

Windows Mobile 5 is actually a good, stable, operating system. it finally has features such as a memory that you don't lose when you turn it off. I have an Orange SPV M600 running WM5 and it's fantastic - Bluetooth 2.0 EDR, 2mp camera, fantastic screen, and a great battery to name but a few things.

Just steer clear of any version of WM other than 5. that's all i'm going to say... 🙄
 
xUKHCx said:
All of the experience i have had with Samsung/Motorola phones (given none of them smart phones) will lead me to advise you to stay away. They are very backwards and lack that ease of use we desire. There is little to no mac compatability with these phones. I would steer clear.

I have never had a treo so can not comment.

By far the best expereinces i have ha are with Sony Ericsson phones and this looks like a very attractive phone http://www.sonyericsson.com/spg.jsp?cc=gb&lc=en&ver=4000&template=pm1_1&zone=pm&mcid=58. Admittidly no guarnteed mac support yet but from previous expereince you can either edit a .plist entry to get it or a plugin.

Edit: Just had a look for the specific plugin i use/used to get my K800 working but unfortunately i found this http://mobile.feisar.com/forum/index.cgi?fid=11&topic_id=1152642167. So you can have limited compatability.
Click to expand...

I have to agree entirely with this post. I had always had a Sony Ericsson phone because they always seemed sexy and worked absolutely flawlessly with my mac. But then the SLVR from Moto came out and I thought why not, after all it was the sexiest phone out there. Thats when problems began. Apart from it being totally non user friendly it would not work (at all) with my mac. Only about 6 months later did Apple provide an update to get round Motorolas stupid connectivity protocols. Now it works fine on my Mac but the phone is still stupidly complicated to use. When my contract is up I will be getting a Sony Ericcson again.
 
bigandy said:
Just steer clear of any version of WM other than 5. that's all i'm going to say... 🙄
Click to expand...
It looks like the Q has WM 5, but Verizon's website says the i730 is running "Windows Mobile® 2003 Pocket PC Phone 2nd Edition". I have heard nothing good about the 2003 edition, so that kind of leads me away from the i730.

The Sony Ericcson P990i looks pretty sweet, but it's about twice as much as I want to spend, so that's definitely out.

How is Palm OS? I've never used it before, is it fairly simple?
 
what will you be doing with it? (primarily)
I played around with the Q in the store and its ok. Can you take a trip to the store and play around with them. that's what i would do... then again i would do anything to get away from my annoying roommate right now!
 
puckhead193 said:
what will you be doing with it? (primarily)
I played around with the Q in the store and its ok. Can you take a trip to the store and play around with them. that's what i would do... then again i would do anything to get away from my annoying roommate right now!
Click to expand...
Ha ha! Thankfully it's been a while since I've had roommates. 😉

The phone will be primarily for business use. I recently got a new job that requires a little more organization than a stack of sticky notes all over my desk. 😉

I honestly don't care about "fun features", I care more about functionality and ease of use.

I went down to my local Verizon shop and of the three I listed above, they only had the Q, but it was dead so I couldn't turn it on or anything. There's a few other kiosks that I'm going to try to hit today, but as of yet I haven't found anywhere locally that has the i730 in stock.
 
bigandy said:
Windows Mobile 5 is actually a good, stable, operating system.
Click to expand...
I refute this claim with every fibre of by being. Absolutely loathed the O2 Exec I had - almost exclusively because of the poorness of WM5.

I now have a Sony Ericsson M600i - the small brother of the P990. It really is excellent and VERY Mac-like. It feels like an iPod and even comes in white. It doesn't yet talk iSync, but still I feel would pass as an 'Apple' phone if the logo was there.
 
I don't know how great support is as of yet, but how about the Blackberry Pearl and/or the Verizon Chocolate, in that segment?
 
mkrishnan said:
I don't know how great support is as of yet, but how about the Blackberry Pearl and/or the Verizon Chocolate, in that segment?
Click to expand...
the pearl looks like a sweet phone. I wish verizon offered it...Its exactly what I want in a phone
 
The OP stated he was looking for a Verizon smartphone, so the LG Chocolate is out (not a smartphone, actually more of a music phone) and the blackberry pearl is GSM on TMobile, so niether of those phones will work.

I have the Q and I love it. It's perfect for what I do and nice and slim. But it's less than intuitive so I recommend trying to find a live one to try to explore. It's great for live email and whatnot, the phone part is a little trickier.
 
bigandy said:
Windows Mobile 5 is actually a good, stable, operating system.
Click to expand...

I have to agree. I recently bought a XV6700 and I love it. Its pretty loaded with EV-DO, Bluetooth and Wi-Fi but I've only had a chance to test out the latter. The biggest complaint I have about it is the low speaker volume so I definately recommend getting a headset for it. Syncing is pretty easy although I'm without a Mac so I can't attest to it and there's a wide range of apps all ready as well. The slide out keyboard is the killer feature though, it is far easier to use than anything else I've tried.

Overall I recommend it, even though I've only had it for a few weeks I'm using the smartphone features more and more. Its a bit bulkier than the Q or the Treo but its got the features to make up for it.
 
feelthefire said:
The OP stated he was looking for a Verizon smartphone, so the LG Chocolate is out (not a smartphone, actually more of a music phone) and the blackberry pearl is GSM on TMobile, so niether of those phones will work.
Click to expand...

Sorry -- I am not up on what phones Verizon does and does not offer....

Anyway though, on the issue of WM5... it seems very dependent on the specific features you use. I have an Axim that uses it, and there are very mixed reviews even from users with the same hardware on whether WM5 is stable or not. For me it is relatively stable -- better than my past experience with, say, Series 60. And it more or less works correctly. But others have different usage profiles and find it to be disastrous on the same hardware.

MissingSync seems to be a good solution in general too, with the one caveat that it does not sync through iSync in Tiger, so it does not really support synchronizing multiple devices. For instance if you use iSync to sync another handheld device or phone, or another computer via .Mac, then since Missing Sync uses Sync Services and not iSync, iSync cannot do a multi-way resolution.
 
feelthefire said:
I have the Q and I love it ... But it's less than intuitive ... the phone part is a little trickier.
Click to expand...
Could you expand on that a little? How is it not intuitive, and how is the phone part tricky?

Also, to those of you that have the Q, can you use iSync, or any other program to sync to your mac?
 
evilgEEk said:
Could you expand on that a little? How is it not intuitive, and how is the phone part tricky?

Also, to those of you that have the Q, can you use iSync, or any other program to sync to your mac?
Click to expand...

I dont have a winmob smartphone edition but I did some research before finally ordering a treo 650 for myself today, so here's what I learned.
WinMob smartphone, what is run on the Q, is a version of windows mobile. it is NOT windows mobile pocket pc. The major differences: No touch-screen, slightly different programs. Programs that can run on smartphone edition can run on pocket pc edition but not vice versa. I think the lack of a touchscreen is where the non-intuition comes in though; the operating system is written so that you can dig into contextual menus, or you can use shortcuts. So there's a bit of a learning curve.

If you want to use any windows mobile device with your mac, you need to use missing sync. It's ~40.00, and they're very, very good. The only caveat is that .exe install programs and firmware/software upgrades may not be possible. Many games and 3rd party software install wrapped in .exe packages, so you need to email the developers (who, from my brief dabble into pocket pc a few years ago, are usually responsive about emailing the unzipped files). If you dual boot or run parallels, you're obviously ok with those caveats.

I think winmob is a great system, with a lot to offer; I personally chose not to upgrade to it because I already have so many palm programs that i've purchased over the years; I am too invested to feel compelled to change up. Also, I chose the treo form factor because I wanted a balance of phone and pda. If you aren't going Palm, I'd go with the Samsung...it's a pocket pc with ev-do, and i personally think the pocket pc variant of winmob is the more developed sibling...the q is great, but it's on a more handicapped platform and further handicapped by having an unusual screen orientation to the rest of the winmob world (This is changing, and will continue to change with the htc dash and a few other big releases, but it's still a slow process to gaining more "landscape" supported programs).
 
So I went down to a Verizon kiosk today and played with the Q. I went in thinking that this was probably going to be the phone that I will get, until I started using it. I can't stand that scroll wheel. It's just awful. I love everything else about it, especially how thin it is.

I haven't ruled it out by any means, it's just got a large strike against it. 😉

I've got another question now. One of the most important things to me with the new phone will be the ability to enter in appointments and whatnot. My job requires a lot of networking with people, and I need a little help remembering all my appointments. Which one of these phones has the best PDA functionality?

Honestly, being able to check email and surf the web wherever i am would be nice, but it's not my highest priority right now. I doubt I'll even be getting the internet service just yet.

Thanks!
 
evilgEEk said:
So I went down to a Verizon kiosk today and played with the Q. I went in thinking that this was probably going to be the phone that I will get, until I started using it. I can't stand that scroll wheel. It's just awful. I love everything else about it, especially how thin it is.

I haven't ruled it out by any means, it's just got a large strike against it. 😉

I've got another question now. One of the most important things to me with the new phone will be the ability to enter in appointments and whatnot. My job requires a lot of networking with people, and I need a little help remembering all my appointments. Which one of these phones has the best PDA functionality?

Honestly, being able to check email and surf the web wherever i am would be nice, but it's not my highest priority right now. I doubt I'll even be getting the internet service just yet.

Thanks!
Click to expand...


1) Hands-on is the way to go with expensive tech, no doubt about it. Were you able to play with the other phones?

2) Again, Samsung or Palm for hardcore PIM. Winmob Smartphone is more read-only, with a larger emphasis on sync and carry than add on the fly. It is made considerably better by the q's keyboard, but the OS can only let you take so many shortcuts (this is from my research, anyone else can feel free to chime in with real world disagreements)
 
question fear said:
1) Hands-on is the way to go with expensive tech, no doubt about it. Were you able to play with the other phones?

2) Again, Samsung or Palm for hardcore PIM. Winmob Smartphone is more read-only, with a larger emphasis on sync and carry than add on the fly. It is made considerably better by the q's keyboard, but the OS can only let you take so many shortcuts (this is from my research, anyone else can feel free to chime in with real world disagreements)
Click to expand...
I played with the Treo 700p, and I did like it even though I didn't really have any idea what I was doing. 😉 The 700 is too expensive for me, but the 650 is just within my price range.

I asked the Verizon rep why no one seems to have the Samsung i730 in stock and she said because it's huge. So I said, "Oh, it's that popular, eh?". To which she replied, "No, it's so big and heavy that no one wants it. We had about four in stock and it took months and months to sell them so we never ordered any more."

I found that rather humerous, and a bad omen. Heh heh.

So what are some other thoughts, some of you folks that own the Q, how does it do as a PIM?
 
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