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What's the best smart phone for Mac OS X user that's not a iPhone?

W

wbeegle

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Nov 2, 2009
1
0
I'm currently with Verizon and really don't want to switch to AT&T just for the iPhone. Really like the service I get with Verizon.

Would like some input on the best smart phone that will work/synch with my MAC. Not sure it's the new Droid because I'm having issues synching my iCal with Google unless I remove all my alarms which would be very time consuming.

Is there a Blackberry that's better than another with synching with Mac applications or is it the new Droid? Input on all sides is appreciated so I can make the best decision. Really want my address book, calendar and email to synch. Love for the tunes and photos to synch as well if that's not asking too much without an iPhone.

Thanks!
 
im not sure if any phones will sync very well with mac. BB is releasing an app to sync your BB with your mac but i dont know much about it yet.. its one of the page 2 stories..

palm wants the pre to be able to sync with the mac but apple does not want it to happen and palm is going about it all the wrong ways... its a great phone... syncs with your email and facebook great, but not with address book or ical. and since your on VZ you would have to wait till next year for it anyways.

i dont know anything about droid.

good luck finding one that will sync well with the mac as apple does not want any phone but the iphone having this capability.

EDIT: so the BB can sync as of now...
https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/795546/
 
tour or storm

I have the tour i got for my birthday and i have the dreaded VZW. i hate the service around my house, have to have a network extender to use in my area. I would recommend any although if your into touchscreen smartphones wait for the storm 2 otherwise get the tour. My parents have the storm and i wanted to be a "rebel" and get a trackball bb but heck my parents like the tours trackball more than their touchscreen. the blackberry desktop manger is not bad and does as far as i have come across everything you need/want for a noniphone to do.
 
Id say hold off and see what the Droid is like. I have a friend who has used one extensively and really likes it a lot.

That being said I'm an avid Blackberry hater. Clunky, Slow, no real internet (although the Storm isn't bad)
 
maybe

although many people are holding off for the droid and hoping it’s the new thing i still believe RIM makes a better product and soon they should have webkit browsers on their phones which will be awesome. I do agree that BB are a little clunky but they have come a longggggggg wayyyy from just 4 or 5 years ago. Although they lag i have the same problem with my macbook so it happen with everything. The key is you get a phone that does what you want and in my opinion a blackberry is perfect although i have not used the droid i do think its too new to have adequate support for Mac OS X
 
Well, I have no sync issues with Google and my Macs and iPhones (my wife also has one). I have it set up so that my email is the same on my iPhone and my MacBook Pro and that I have one shared calendar that is the same on both iPhones, my MacBook Pro and my iMac at home. You can set a default alarms in both iCal and Google. However, they might conflict, so you should turn off one of those. You should tinker a little with those settings to get it right. I'm not sure anymore how I did it. But it works like a charm now.

I would suggest the HTC Hero, or buy an unlocked iPhone from elsewhere in the world. They are expensive, though. Because they are factory unlocked (Belgium, Italy to name a few) they are more expensive (full factory warranty). Never buy from someone who wants his/her money via wire-transfer.

Good luck :D
 
Parsec said:
Well, I have no sync issues with Google and my Macs and iPhones (my wife also has one). I have it set up so that my email is the same on my iPhone and my MacBook Pro and that I have one shared calendar that is the same on both iPhones, my MacBook Pro and my iMac at home. You can set a default alarms in both iCal and Google. However, they might conflict, so you should turn off one of those. You should tinker a little with those settings to get it right. I'm not sure anymore how I did it. But it works like a charm now.

I would suggest the HTC Hero, or buy an unlocked iPhone from elsewhere in the world. They are expensive, though. Because they are factory unlocked (Belgium, Italy to name a few) they are more expensive (full factory warranty). Never buy from someone who wants his/her money via wire-transfer.

Good luck :D
Click to expand...

even an unlocked iphone will not work on verizon.
 
for the longest time, i hated blackberries.
in my eyes, blackberry was the equivalent of windows. they were big, clunky, ugly, and only played nice with windows. nowadays, they're completely different. the difference is like hearing windows users complain that word documents can't be opened with a mac.

the new blackberry software for the mac is quite good. heck, it's miles better than the one that have for windows. as is usually the case, RIM knows that mac users are used to simplicity and things that work. the merit of this mentality is that they leave functions that work in, and functions that don't (but which may be nice) out. examples of this could be seen in that the mac version of the RIM software cannot load blackberry OS's that isn't factory. the windows version lets you play with all kinds of stuff.

i have a blackberry.
it works brilliantly with what i have (mac pro, macbook air) and what i need. blackberry instant messaging is almost perfect. it's that good. and the keyboard is sublime.
 
Blackberry Tour user, here.

Absolutely the best phone I've owned on Verizon. When people say "Crackberry", they aren't lying. It's incredibly addictive. E-mail syncing is unmatched. BBM is a great plus. I actually use it more than I send SMS texts since many of my friends are BB users. Overall, it's a great phone. Desktop Manager for Mac is incredibly convenient. I don't tinker with my phone OS's as I prefer official releases so I can't speak on that. If you want to hold off, the Blackberry Essex (basically the Tour with a trackpad instead of a trackball and wi-fi) is coming in early 2010.

The Droid looks good but BB's are somewhat the go-to industry standard.
 
the new bold 9700 released today is also a really good device.
touchpad, wifi, hspa, upgradable memory, removable battery, and a 3.2mp. auto-focus camera for those who use it. e-mail sync is what blackberries are all about.
 
iPhone V Nokia

While I joined the forum as I am considering this exact topic I am aware and have used the media beta software released by Nokia for their N and E series Smartphones that manually syncs iTunes, iPhoto as well as bookmarks on some models. am currently running this and iSync as well with an N73 and have no problems in sharing data. Not sure if this helps. :apple:
 
Android phones sync with a separate application but I don't know how well they sync with iCal or things like that. BB has that sync software out now. I would say the any higher end BB with Wifi and the likes (whatever features you want) or an Android device (the Droid being the obvious choice).

Honestly the Droid is the best phone on VZW but you probably won't like it because its not plug in and sync. Now if you transfered everything to Google, or are a heavy Google Web app users (calendar, gmail, contacts, and the like it works amazingly via the "cloud").

DoubleTwist is that application for Macs that syncs your content. Though you may be better off mounting the SD card and just dragging and dropping...much faster.
 
the thing with everything in the cloud is that when it rains, it pours.
everything consolidated to one provider (google) puts a way-too-heavy bet for my liking on google in my opinion.
 
not sure what you are defining as clunky and slow as BB's are beasts for work - email, calendar, outlook sync OTA. I still think the BB is the best mobile smart phone, not sexy but right now has almost everything you want in a mobile device. As far as a media phone = iphone, they have issues to work out.

chrono1081 said:
Id say hold off and see what the Droid is like. I have a friend who has used one extensively and really likes it a lot.

That being said I'm an avid Blackberry hater. Clunky, Slow, no real internet (although the Storm isn't bad)
Click to expand...
 
As bad as I hate to suggest it, Windows Mobile used to sync very well with my Mac using the Missing Sync software. It wasn't perfect, as sometimes I'd need to reboot to get things to detect properly. But it honestly kept everything in sync that I needed it to, including calendar, contacts, music and photos. Email was handled via 3G (ahem, EDGE) with IMAP.

That being said, I do *not* recommend a Windows Mobile phone in any way, shape or form. After getting an iPhone, it was staggering just how ancient and clunky the WM OS really is.
 
might be true, but i don't know if you can judge an OS as clunky because it doesn't sync well with your non-MS OS. i think the HTC devices coming out with it look pretty slick, however my work doesn't allow for many options for smart phones, although its not like BB's are a bad thing.

mac-slap-happy said:
As bad as I hate to suggest it, Windows Mobile used to sync very well with my Mac using the Missing Sync software. It wasn't perfect, as sometimes I'd need to reboot to get things to detect properly. But it honestly kept everything in sync that I needed it to, including calendar, contacts, music and photos. Email was handled via 3G (ahem, EDGE) with IMAP.

That being said, I do *not* recommend a Windows Mobile phone in any way, shape or form. After getting an iPhone, it was staggering just how ancient and clunky the WM OS really is.
Click to expand...
 
no, no.... back in the day when I was using windows mobile, it was clunky.. it was literally windows in a mobile phone. the experience was horrible. nowadays, you've got these themes and skins that make it look better.

then came blackberry. it still sucked when you needed to sync with a mac but now that's solved with the native mac syncing app you can download for free. it plays nice with everything on the mac.

i was on the fence about buying a new blackberry or iphone myself several weeks ago. debating and debating. the bottom line is, the iphone is a media device with calling capabilities and the blackberry is a phone with media capabilities.

to each their own. they both work fantastic.
as for apps. apple just announced they've got over 100,000 apps or something. that's meaningless when you consider that the most useful apps are probably around 5%.
 
I gave in and bought a Motorola Droid today...

I am a long time Verizon uses and when I travel with coworkers who have BB on ATT they always have connection problems that I never had. I gave in today waiting for a iPhone on Verizon and bought the Motorola DROID. Now I find myself wondering what do I do now. How do I set it up, what can I use that works with Mac. I know it's new and I may pay a price waiting for everything to develop but so far I can strongly strate it rocks over my BB Curve.

Everything is faster, browsing e-mail etc. The GPS works fine although not as good as my Garmin but better than the BB. The phone seems to know what time it is and the BB never does when I travel. The screen is bright, Hulu works on it and now the best part... :D

My monthly bill dropped by $35.00! Yes thats right I had a full service plan but because some services are built into the Android OS my monthly bill dropped. I am really excited about that.:)

I've been a Mac user since the Lisa and I've own just about every model so I felt a little disloyal for not getting an iPhone but hey Apple you screwed us all making us use AT&T I simply was not going to wait any longer.
 
You can go for a knockoff, but like the iPod knockoffs, they don't work the same.

carbonware said:
I am a long time Verizon uses and when I travel with coworkers who have BB on ATT they always have connection problems that I never had. I gave in today waiting for a iPhone on Verizon and bought the Motorola DROID. Now I find myself wondering what do I do now. How do I set it up, what can I use that works with Mac. I know it's new and I may pay a price waiting for everything to develop but so far I can strongly strate it rocks over my BB Curve.

Everything is faster, browsing e-mail etc. The GPS works fine although not as good as my Garmin but better than the BB. The phone seems to know what time it is and the BB never does when I travel. The screen is bright, Hulu works on it and now the best part... :D

My monthly bill dropped by $35.00! Yes thats right I had a full service plan but because some services are built into the Android OS my monthly bill dropped. I am really excited about that.:)

I've been a Mac user since the Lisa and I've own just about every model so I felt a little disloyal for not getting an iPhone but hey Apple you screwed us all making us use AT&T I simply was not going to wait any longer.
Click to expand...

Apple did not screw anyone with AT&T. At the time, Verizon didn't think it will succeed / or can't get Apple to put verizon logos all over it.

Heck, verizon cannot do simultaneous data and voice at that time, and isn't going to upgrade their network to make it happen (remember visual voice mail?). Yes AT&T can do simultaneous data and voice, and verizon still can't. Visual voice mail also costs additional on verizon.
 
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