Recently in Mobile Phones Category

Pursuant to my talk of having my very own cloud, I have been investigating ways to sync my google calendars with my mobile phone. As I use Nokia phones, I need a solution that runs on Symbian. The device I use now is S60v3. I am wide open to sugestions.

For now, I have found GooSync. GooSync works like SpanningSync - it depends on a third-party server. I don't particularly like that model and will keep right on looking. The important thing is that there are options.

My inner geek is screaming, I must write about phones again.

Last time I wrote about this, I think I was using my Nokia E61i. While I was using the E61i, I was focusing on whether or not I could be satisfied with a phone of that form factor. I enjoyed how thin it was, but I was really unhappy with how wide it was. I remember speaking of the way I use my bluetooth headset for most of my lengthy calls, but that doesn't minimize the importance of my quick calls on the street or if I've forgotten my headset and am in the car. The phone needs to be comfortable for that.

I also text an awful lot in situations where one-handed use is important. Almost more important than the qwerty keyboard. I found the one-handed use of my E61i pretty uncomfortable and foreign. This is probably because I'd never used that form factor before, but I wasn't warming up to it the way I wanted to. So I've stepped back to my E70 for now and the search continues.

Some of you might wonder why I keep using the E series. Okay, probably none of you are, but I'll pretend you care and keep writing. My blog, so there! Hah!

Anyhow, for the less initiated, Nokia has a couple of classes of smart phones that I can continue - E and N. The E series phones are geared toward productivity and enterprise uses while the N series phones are geared toward multimedia. This is why you'll find a lot of phones with qwerty keyboards on the E series, but a lot of features like better cameras or music players are on the N series.

Personally, I live in the conflicted world of knowing the difference between what I want and what I need.

What I need is my ability to easily SSH around, and that often amounts to a qwerty keyboard. What I want is a device that can replace other devices, like Nokia's new N82 with its 5mp camera and xenon flash that lights up a room like any digital camera's flash and makes my inner shutterbug drool.

I have spent a lot of time hunting for the perfect mobile phone. I have been using a Nokia E61i most recently and have been very pleased with it. I do, however, take issue with one thing. I never bought into the whole super wide form factor with a qwerty keyboard on the bottom. I find it awkward to hold up to my face.

But then I realized something - for the majority of my lengthy phone calls I use a bluetooth headset for comfort. I started with a Jabra number which was mediocre at best for comfort and poor for quality. But I was pretty uninitiated in the world of headsets. I moved on to a second Jabra, this one even less comfortable but slightly higher quality. Still, it did not do well with holding a connection. More recently I became frustrated with that, too. Neither of these units are worth mentioning the unit number of - I have come to believe that Jabra products are just too low-end for me. Probably good for a casual user, but not for me. I fancy myself a power user.

Recently I moved on to a Nokia BH-900. It looked really slick, and I was excited to try it out. It was a little on the large side, and it had a boom mic which I thought was kind of cool. When it arrived I was a little bit surprised to find it was mostly plastic. I don't know why I was so surprised; plastic is a great way to make things lighter. I was, however, disappointed to find that the unique claw system that replaces the standard ear hook just wasn't terribly comfortable for me. I managed to put up with it for about two days, but that's when I accidentally broke it while fiddling with something I honestly had no business fiddling with. All in all I felt the sound quality was good and the unit was built pretty solid, but I chose not to replace the unit since it just wasn't that comfortable anyway.

So I moved on to my most recent purchase. On the suggestion of a friend, I bought a Plantronics Explorer 340. For years now, Plantronics has been associated in my mind with high quality telephone head sets. I'm not sure why it took me so long to make the leap that if they were so great on land lines they're probably pretty good wireless accessories, too. The head set arrived today and my immediate impression has been so good that I feel compelled to write about it here prior to even using it on a long call.

The first thing I noticed about the new head set is that the ear hook is pretty stiff, and the hinge that allows the hook to move away from the unit is on a weak spring that will hold the unit snug to the wearer's ear. I also noticed that the ear piece itself has a little, well, I'll call it a pipe on it that sort of slips into the ear canal to help with volume. The side effect of all of these things combined is that the ear hook, while stiff, is able to be significantly looser than any headset I have ever worn before because the spring and the ear pipe both help provide additional support. Because that support is spread across so many parts of my ear, the unit actually feels lighter and more comfortable than I suspect it otherwise would. The sound quality seems pretty good based on my couple of test calls, and the volume is above average. I do, however, find the toggle button to be a little awkward.

So we'll see how this goes as it gets more use.

I remember years ago saying, "I want my phone to be a phone. Nothing more than a phone. Nothing less." I suppose to a degree that's true, except I am not buying a phone anymore. I am purchasing a Personal Device. A device upon which I will rely for many aspects of my life. I will use this device for my telephone, yes. But I will use it for SMS, MMS, a camera in a pinch. I will use it for a calendar, for a phone book, for a note pad. I will use it to get directions to wherever I'm going, to figure out where I want to be going. I might even use the right one for some music.

In realizing this I have been forced to re-evaluate my choices and opinions regarding my purchases. I have to break out of the paradigm of a phone just being a phone and start to accept how much more than that it can be. Then I have to determine how much of that I want. In doing so, I have begun to understand more of the hype around new phones and features. There are so many and varied different things for these devices. Those that I listed above are the ones that matter to me. And to others? The office suite. The fact that they can do presentations from their phone. The fact that they have a home theater in their pocket. Things like that.

I have to begin to think of my Smart Phone differently. I have to think of what I want it to be. Design my own in my mind, and define why.

I will start by defining my priorities better.

- First and foremost, my phone is a phone. I need it to be good at being a phone - quality in sound is a must. Speaker phone is a must for me because, well, I use it. The ability to use Bluetooth hands-free devices is critical for my success. Battery life is important to me - I need to be able to actually use my phone regularly throughout a day and not run out of battery before it ends.

- My Personal Device is my communications hub when I am not at home or at a computer. Quality SMS, MMS, and Email support is critical.

- My Personal Device will be my organizer. Long gone are the days when a Palm Pilot was a new thing. My personal device has this functionality in it and it works well. It must be able to synchronize with my computer(s) in both directions. This means at a minimum it must have Mac support. It is preferable that this support be built-in with iSync, but I will accept it if there is a high quality third-party application that integrates with iSync. Either way, I will only accept the use of iSync. Linux support would be neat but is not required.

I must be able to sync my calendars and my address book. It would be good to be able to synchronize my to do list, too. I must be able to sync my address book. I must be able to take notes for later review quickly and easily.

- My Personal Device must be customizable; it needs to support a variety of third party applications and, possibly, to allow me to write my own. This includes apps like Google Maps, which I do rely on regularly, or PuTTY.

Knowing that these are my basic requirements, let's talk about interface. Qwerty keyboards are a requirement for me, so that eliminates a few Smart Phones right there. This leaves a two basic interfaces: devices that are driven by the dial pad and devices driven by a touch screen.

For me, devices with a dial pad are fantastic and provide a strong degree of one-handedness (is that a word?). It means that if for some reason I must send an SMS or look up directions while driving, I can. It'll be with some difficulty, and I strongly recommend against such an act as it is unsafe and in some states I'm sure illegal, but it's a whole lot easier than doing it with a two-handed device. Additionally, there are many devices with dial pads that can be manipulated to reveal a qwerty keyboard - the best of both worlds.

A device with a touch screen used to be boring and annoying for me. I hated them. Then came the iPhone. They re-thought the entire interface. Still, though, the lack of a physical keyboard is too much for me. Enter HTC. HTC's Touch interface is beautiful. While it is a tad lacking, I hope that they continue to run with it in the Kaiser and make even more improvements. When they do, I suspect that this would be a very usable interface and comparable to the iPhone. It might not be quite as pretty, but it will be every bit as usable. And, I admit, it's a whole lot prettier than the basic interface.

I think the question in my mind is where the technology is going. It seems like the world wants touch screens, so perhaps my next device should follow that trend. But I just can't quite give up the mechanical keyboard, even if it's just the qwerty one.

For me, if I can program a certain missing feature into my Nokia E70 I'm going to stick with it for a while. Tempting though it may be to switch, none of the upcoming phones I've seen support both frequencies T-Mobile has earmarked for 3G use in the states. That's a downer for me.

Let's see what comes next.

The Great Mobile Phone Debate rages on. I hate Microsoft and Windows and all, but Windows Mobile 6 looks pretty great. So now I have to choose a phone. My new phone will, of course, need to be quad band and have support for at least one of the bands T-Mobile has chosen for 3G. That makes HTC's new line-up pretty safe.

I'm partial to two - the HTC S730 (Wings / Volans) and the HTC Kaiser. I've never had a phone with a touch screen before. Although the Wings would be great for texting while driving (yeah, I know, bad), I don't drive much. So I have to wonder... which one do I want to go with?

Back in the days when SMS was new and exciting a lot of mobile phones were picking up a feature where users could specify a tone for incoming SMS by contacts. What ever happened to that? Even as recently as a few years ago, my old LG VX8100 had the feature. I upgraded to an LG VX8600 and discovered the feature was gone. It seems like this feature, which was common when SMS was not, is now uncommon when SMS is common.

I've spent a lot of time looking for this feature for my Nokia E70 and it just doesn't seem to exist. There was a $10 app called SMSAlert for Symbian 8, but the E70 runs Symbian 9. Reviews indicated that SMSAlert didn't work too well anyway.

There is an application called Ringo for Windows Mobile and Palm OS. I have heard mixed reviews about whether or not it works on Windows Mobile 6 yet, but these guys seem the type to make that a when, not an if, if not already. That's good because the only competitors for my Nokia E70 are the Nokia E90, again running Symbian (9.2), the HTC S710 which is a little weighty and hasn't got 3G support (T-Mobile is getting 3G support, but that's another post), and the rumored HTC S730.

The HTC S730 promises to meet the Nokia E90's feature set head to head, providing comparable functionality at what will hopefully be a good price. I really dig the form factor of these HTC phones, and if I do decide to replace the E70 it will be with one of these HTCs, unless something more interesting comes out in the near future or HTC drops some critical feature. Let's face it, I dislike all things Microsoft but they're doing well in this space and I think it's the right way to go right now.

I'll be brief here, don't worry. It's strictly an opinion piece. That said, I'm tired of all you who are screaming that Apple was wrong to sign an exclusive contract with AT&T Wireless. I don't particularly like locked phones either - that's why I have an unlocked phone on T-Mobile, but look at what Apple has done here.

The iPhone isn't just a nifty device, it's a device with unique service-based features. Video voice mail, for example, requires service support. Apple could not hope to gain this kind of support from all carriers, so they had to stick to just one. And think about it - as these features become a standard, Apple will have more leverage to push their product to other GSM providers.

Oh, and one more thing before I go. T-Mobile was slated to start rolling out 3G support in mid-2007. Has that even started yet? I truthfully don't know the answer. The last I heard was the schedule, but nothing more.

So sit back and relax - Apple is doing their part in attempting to catch US mobile phone technology up to the rest of the world, and they're doing it in the only way they really can.

It never ends. We, the gadget geeks of the world, will never stop lusting over the latest and greatest technology. So let's talk a little bit.

Upon moving to the great city of Boston I found myself in mobile phone heaven - I can use GSM providers now! Sure, Vermont does have some coverage for GSM thanks to Unicel, but the pricing plans are not really usable. Vermont is actually the only state without AT&T support. Cool, huh? But enough about my departure from the middle of nowhere.

I immediately signed up with T-Mobile and have been very happy since. I feel that the pricing is significantly better than that of Cingular (now AT&T), and the coverage is easily comparable. Of course, I can't have an iPhone but I don't particularly like touch screens. I got my fingers (and immediately my finger prints) on an iPhone and I'll pass on it.

What I do want, however, is an unlocked GSM smart phone. Ideally this phone would be quad-band, but a tri-band with both US frequencies is acceptable. A QWERTY keyboard is a must, and a compact form factor is critical. A decent web browser is needed, and I'll need to be able to have multiple email accounts, separately, on the phone. Oh, and I need to be able to synchronize my calendar and address book with the phone from my mac.

The first solution I came up with was the Nokia E70. The phone is very nice. It runs Symbian for the OS and is supported by iSync. It has a standard candy bar form factor and splits open to reveal a tactile QWERTY keyboard. It has a quality web browser and it can handle email exactly as I want it to. But it's not without its issues. First off, it's sluggish. Sometimes I wonder if I've hit a button yet. I find that pretty frustrating. Second, there are very few external buttons for shortcuts to things like the camera (which by the way is pretty poor, and very slow). Third and arguably most important, when I flip the phone open to use the QWERTY keyboard, my signal goes down instantly. It seems like the keyboard blocks part of the built-in antenna.

The fourth issue is really touchy. I mentioned it before - this is a Symbian smart phone. Aside from being a tad sluggish, Symbian is not that popular and not really well developed for. A lot of software is designed for Palm and for Windows Mobile, but not for Symbian. That being said, I have my general dislike of all things Windows and that makes Windows Mobile hard to swallow.

Not being easily satisfied, I'm now looking at the HTC S710. This phone runs Windows Mobile 6, which I believe is the most recent. It's got a really cool side-slide design to bring out a tactile QWERTY keyboard with keys that are large enough to be fumbled with a lot easier than the Nokia's. I have not yet had an opportunity to play with the software, but it looks promising. The kicker is, of course, that this is Windows Mobile and the only way to sync it with my mac will be to use the new version (not yet released) of The Missing Sync.

Fortunately for me, a friend has an HTC phone that I will be able to try out. I'll try to update as I try other things.