Switchin' cellphones - Suggestion?

[SilentPanda]

I'm switching providers here in the near future (as in... later today if I figure out a phone I like).

I want it to work with iSync of course (my iBook with bluetooth) and I'd like it to work as a modem on the go. I will most likely be getting service through iWireless which is now part of T-Mobile. They offer data service of 100 minutes a month for $7.95 and I probably won't even hit half that so that's plenty for me.

Here are the phones they currently offer:

https://www.iwireless.com/phones2.asp

Nokia 3620 *
Motorola C350 *
Nokia N Gage * (not a chance)
Motorola V60gi
Nokia 6340i
Motorola V400
Nokia 3595
Motorola T720 *
Nokia 5100
Sendo M551
Nokia 7250i
Nokia 9290 Communicator (I already have a laptop though... )

* - on the iSync list of supported devices.

From what I can tell, the only one of those that has bluetooth and is on the list of supported devices is the Nokia 3620. Does anybody have this phone and like/hate it? Or does somebody have one of these other phones and find that it meets these criteria:

• Bluetooth
• iSync Compatible (all I really need are phone #'s synced)
• Vibrating Battery (I hate it when people let their phones ring at work)
• Do "mobile" internet

Hmmm... my list is short I guess.

Thanks for any input. Plus I know people like to shop even if it is vicariously. Sick isn't it?

 

[plus_c]

I own a SonyEricsson T68i. It does everything you ask - iSync compatible, Bluetooth, vibrate, GPRS modem. It's simple, it's small...I love it. It's also a few generations old (first-gen color phone), so it's a bit harder to find, but cheap when you find it.

I know it's not on your list, but I think that you might do well to consider it. Is your provider waiving an activation fee if you buy a phone from them too? If not, I'd definitely go for the T68i.

Hope that helps, and have fun shopping!

 

[cubist]

I used to have a T68i, and ditched it because of terrible reception. I have a Moto T710 and it's very good; altho you have to use a USB cable to sync, the cable was cheap, and much faster than bluetooth. Is the T720 similar? You are getting GSM/GPRS, right?

 

[SilentPanda]

Cables are for wimps!

It'll be GSM (not sure about GPRS but it's on my list of things to ask them). I actually haven't talked to them as of yet (going to do that post-work).

 

[mkrishnan]

LOL at the N-Gage not a chance....

I have the 3650, which is the predecessor to the 3620, sort of, I guess. Mine's a relatively early one (more than 1.5 years old), so some of this may not apply any more.

The bluetooth features work well. I have a BT headset which I use intermittantly (but which does its job pretty well), and I use the BT modem function for my iBook quite a lot, recently.

The phone is bulky. It is definitely not a pocket phone -- unless you wear cargo pants all the time, you're going to have to put it in a bag or something.

The build issue thing I have with this phone is that mine will frequently shut off if its dropped even moderately hard on the table (by moderately hard, I mean something I'd probably do to my iPod, which I baby -- not hard at all). But I have never heard this echoed by others, so I think its just my copy.

The camera works about as well as cell cams do, and because of the MMC, there is a huge amount of space for pictures.

The e-mail application is actually fairly nice, too, and much better than using wap mail if you can do POP or IMAP with your mail provider.

ISync works wonderfully with the phone.

The menus and stuff are quite slow, compared to non-smart-phones I've had in the past, but I've heard Sony Ericssons have this issue too. Wouldn't expect that to be any better in the 3620 than the 3650 because they both use the same Symbian release.

 

[mkrishnan]

Oh, btw, what's IWireless? Never heard of it (I have T-Mobile). If you use a GSM phone for data, I'm pretty sure the only data service they support is GPRS. At least its the only one which the 36xx phones support (well, MMS, but....).

 

[Brother Michael]

The Sony Ericisson T61X line the bluetooth stuff too. Not sure if they are more expensive or less, but they do it.

Mike

 

[SilentPanda]

Oh, btw, what's IWireless? Never heard of it (I have T-Mobile). If you use a GSM phone for data, I'm pretty sure the only data service they support is GPRS. At least its the only one which the 36xx phones support (well, MMS, but....).

iWireless is a local cell phone thing that T-Mobile recently bought.

I think I'll check out the size of the 3620 (and the others when I get to the store)... fitting in my pocket shouldn't be too big a deal. Hopefully.

 

[mobi]

Please do yourself a favor and get the SE T610. It is very friendly with OS-X + Bluetooth.

I have a tmobile phone plan and get free unlimited data via GPRS. I can use the phone as a dialup connection to check email and slowly putz around online. I can even access https for FREE woooooo hooooo!

Please check out the Sony Ericsson T610/616

 

[mpw]

I'd hang on until more details of the new Motorola V3 are released. It's launching soon and the teaser info. and pics. on Motorola's website look great. Hopefully it's a new dawn for Motorola's design trend.

 

[zv470]

I've got a SonyEricsson T68i... terrible phone, the user interface is ****. How is this?... The same key combination to take the phone out of keylock is the same as to delete incoming messages?

iSync works great with the phone... except when you have events that repeat often... this really slows down syncing because it creates seperate entries for each repetition.

I can't rant enought about the bad interface design. Another example: to edit a phone number you have to go: menu>Phone Book>Manage Contact>Edit Contact>Find: to find is half a mission in itself, then >Edit Info> then navigate to the item you want to edit>click>put in the changes> click set> click exit> click save YES> exit exit exit exit exit exit (I forget how many exit clicks) and Voila DONE. You like to think Sony employs intelligent people. So... how did such an abomination make it to final product stage? You think someone would have said "Hang on I think we can do this better?". hmm

 

[zv470]

I'd probly get a Nokia 6600. Using Saling Clicker with that phone would be prettie cool on Symbian OS.

 

[tace]

SonyEricsson Phones and User Interfaces

I've got a SonyEricsson T68i... terrible phone, the user interface is ****. How is this?... The same key combination to take the phone out of keylock is the same as to delete incoming messages?

This is so true. As someone who works on UIs, I have seen this with my friend's SonyEricsson phone, too. Whoever designed the interface was definitely an engineer.

Even though I liked the look of the phone and the price was right, there is no way I would buy that thing. As far as User Interfaces go, Nokia has always been the best. I only wish that they didn't ignore the US GSM market so badly. Nokia will introduce about 5 or 6 models at a time and only one of them will work in North America.

Motorola has some decent flip phones. Many times they'll use a third party to sync the phone with a Windows or Mac. I have seen it before with my friends that the company who supplied the sync software would go out of business and Motorola would say, "oh well, buy a new phone if you want your phone to sync with the current OS". Shortly, Moto doesn't have the best track record in pleasing their customers who want to integrate their phones to their computers.

 

[hkriffraff]

I had a SE T68i and now a SE Z600... both work very reliably with OS X and Palm OS...excellent connectivity. I wouldn't go for any other brand for your purposes.

 

[jesuscandle]

I'd probly get a Nokia 6600. Using Saling Clicker with that phone would be prettie cool on Symbian OS.

What's Symbian OS?

Well, I guess I know it's a consortium effort to create a great OS for mobiles.

Maybe the better question is - why do I care? What's good / bad about it? How do I know what phones use it?

Also - how does this relate to SyncML? I know a lot less about SyncML...

thanks.

 

[mkrishnan]

Maybe the better question is - why do I care? What's good / bad about it? How do I know what phones use it?

Mostly you don't / shouldn't. But since its a consortium type effort, it changes the way you look at the phones a little bit. It's mostly used by Nokia and Sony-Ericsson on their smart phones (all the 36xx, 66xx, 76xx phones from Nokia, I believe, from Sony, P800 and P900 -- I don't think the T6xx phones use Symbian, but I'm not 100% on that).

Anyway, the things to look for:
- There are two, at least, versions of Symbian OS out there -- some of the new Nokia phones use a newer version of the OS, but the 36xx and I think the 66xx continue to use the old version. Kinda like Palm's OS.

- It does give you broader access to downloadable software, but to be honest, I have only installed a couple of 3P applications on my phone.

- One con is that there is some evidence of virii that target bluetooth and symbian. There was a virus called Cabir or something like that, which basically targetted these phones, but it was just a proof-of-concept (it didn't do anything really bad to your phone).

You can look here for more detail:
http://my-symbian.com/main/index.php

 

[SilentPanda]

I ended up getting the Nokia 3620. I'll probably post a way too full review of it this weekend because details about it are lacking on the internet. I'm still trying to figure things out on it and unfortunately my carrier doesn't know squat about the phone... I got transferred to way too many people last night and eventually kindly told them I'd try to figure it out.

However... I was able this morning to rip a DVD (actually a 12 second snippet although I could have done the whole thing I suppose) to my hard drive in MPEG-4 format. Then I used Quicktime to recompress it to 3G (H.264 format). I was able to send it via bluetooth to my phone and play the video back. Obviously not DVD quality but it works. Anything I can play in Quicktime I can convert to the 3G H.264 format. The ratio is about 1/2 meg a minute. So on a 128 card I could fit 256 minutes of video (maybe 200 minutes is more realistic just to be safe). Which means... 3 hours of movie on my phone for no good reason except I'm a dork.

The bluetooth works wonderfully though. I'm still trying to figure out which image specs I should use for my "standby mode" image. The default image took up the whole screen but I can't get an image I put on the phone to take up the whole screen. So I might call Nokia tonight to get that info as it's not in the user's manual.

Still also working on getting my Mobile Internet working. The provider was hardly aware they offered it let alone how to set it up...

So yeah... this weekend I'll spit out a review probably.

 

[mkrishnan]

See , re: bluetooth cell modem....hopefully its almost the same on iWireless and T-Mobile's main service.

 

[SilentPanda]

Yeah... I saw that thread yesterday when I was trying to figure out how to get my cell to work as internet. I can get the phone paired with the computer no problem. It's getting the phone to work on the internet that's been tricky. Like I say... the customer service reps don't have a clue how to set it up. On Nokias site however they have a way you can set it up via a smart message their site will generate (specifically for iWireless to boot) but as of right now, I'm trying to get iWireless to see if my smart messages are working because I can't get it to work (I should be able to e-mail my cell phone but when I try from the iWireless page which only requires my cell #, it doesn't work so I think it's not set up on their end yet).

 

[geese]

I've got a SonyEricsson T68i... terrible phone, the user interface is ****. How is this?... The same key combination to take the phone out of keylock is the same as to delete incoming messages?

iSync works great with the phone... except when you have events that repeat often... this really slows down syncing because it creates seperate entries for each repetition.

I can't rant enought about the bad interface design. Another example: to edit a phone number you have to go: menu>Phone Book>Manage Contact>Edit Contact>Find: to find is half a mission in itself, then >Edit Info> then navigate to the item you want to edit>click>put in the changes> click set> click exit> click save YES> exit exit exit exit exit exit (I forget how many exit clicks) and Voila DONE. You like to think Sony employs intelligent people. So... how did such an abomination make it to final product stage? You think someone would have said "Hang on I think we can do this better?". hmm

I've got a T610, and I can tell you that the interface is MUCH better then the previous Ericssons. With its big screen, the interface has been layed out more intelligently and I think its a little more intuative then the Nokias. Oh, and it sync's with my eMac with cheap BT dongle from eBay (which isnt meant to be mac compatible) flawlessly.

The only gripe I have is that sending SMS's is long-winded. Writing the message is fine, but when you send it, it asks for the number. But as you wont know the number off hand you'll have to then select 'look-up', then 'Phonebook' then 'Find'.

Oh, and that screen is crap in direct sunlight. I think the new T630 fixed this.

 

[mkrishnan]

Yeah... I saw that thread yesterday when I was trying to figure out how to get my cell to work as internet. I can get the phone paired with the computer no problem. It's getting the phone to work on the internet that's been tricky.

Oh, now I'm confused... are you trying to:

1) Get the phone to act as a cellular modem (what I thought)
2) Trying to access WAP pages
3) Trying to access IMAP or POP mail
4) Trying to access real web pages via something like Opera

I didn't have to change *any* settings on my phone for (1). But are you saying the phone isn't even set up to do wireless web on the phone itself? That's awful strange.

 

[JDOG_]

Just say no to Dr...AT&T

Just stay away from AT&T. They might have a bunch of Bluetooth phones, but their data service is slow and expensive. T-Mobile offers unlimited data at a slightly faster speed for like $5 a month--I don't use it anymore, but it was pretty decent when I did have it. AT&T will just jack you.

 

[slughead]

Cables are for wimps!

It'll be GSM (not sure about GPRS but it's on my list of things to ask them). I actually haven't talked to them as of yet (going to do that post-work).

or for people who can't play games that are effected by high packet loss....

I have a gigabit network and I play FPSs online all the time.. can any wireless maniac front on that?