Symptom of age

[threemonkeys]

My old Treo PDA/Phone finally failed the other day. It was an old one – one of the very first devices to combine a phone and PDA functions. But it had many of the things that still carry forward in the fancier phones available now – big(ish) display, touch screen, full keyboard, email, web browsing and a big range of useful and frivolous downloadable applications. But not a music player nor a camera.

Not that I’ve used it as a phone for a while – the reception crapped out. So I got a cheap and seemingly indestructible Motorola to use as a mobile phone and just used the Treo as a PDA. But now it is time to combine the two needs back into one device – plus modest level camera and music player.

I see a good number of you out there in lj land have recently purchased or are coveting iPhones or equally high powered devices. But I feel like I have done the early adopter, technolust thing. Looking at what I actually need out of the device, it seems that for my personal needs, something like this modest (boring) mid-range Nokia does everything I need and has Symbian support for adding extra stuff.

But am I missing something? Is there some critical feature, some killer app, that these high end devices bring to the party other than a bigger screen? Is there some extra thing for the money that will make life better? Or is it just technolust for the new and shiny? Not that I’m criticising technolust – I regard it as a perfectly valid expression of desire. I just don’t have it in this case.

Comments

iPhones

[beagl.livejournal.com]

As well as the stuff you already know, iPhones:

- make very good music players.
- are great for casual gaming (i.e. word games, sudoku type things, tetris type things).

But really it's the "internet in my pocket" thing that I really like. The browsing experience is good enough that you can actually use it and I'll often occupy myself by using Google Reader or the like.

All that combines to make it the ultimate "what shall I do while I wait?" machine.

Re: iPhones

[threemonkeys.livejournal.com]

Interesting thanks.

I do tend to use the games during those "waiting for the fish and chips" times. The Nokias with Symbian support have lots of downloadable games available.

So, as you say, it is the browsing anywhere with something useable seems to be the key. I have used an iPhone to search and read a few pages, so I have a handle on how well it does the job. The thing I have to ask myself is, will I use it? I only ever used the Treo web features to check cricket scores which the Nokia will do too.

Re: iPhones

[strangedave.livejournal.com]

I'd echo the point that the internet browsing is good enough you can actually use it.
This both means that it is good enough to browse for entertainment, and that it definitely actually works with things like banking sites, box office sites, etc that are quite demanding on browsers and very handy to be able to have at times. I use it far more than I did previous phones which allegedly had browsing.

Also, the ability to add applications via the iPhone is such an easy and straightforward experience, with so many good apps, that you do it far more than I ever did with a Symbian phone, and you can find useful apps for all sorts of personal interests.

I'm not trying to just sell you on the iPhone itself here, but I do think on of the current generation of new smartphones (iPhone, Google Android, new Palm thingy, etc) is likely to be a good buy, especially if you are already interested in a PDA. The developer community is filled with energy and enthusiasm for these things, with some really interesting stuff going on.

Re: iPhones

[threemonkeys.livejournal.com]

Thats the hub of the matter - if it is that much easier to use, then will I use it more? Obviously "yes", but enough to justify the price? - I am dubious about that for my mode of existence.

The new Palm looks nice - I did have a twinge of technolust when I saw it - having a soft spot for Palm devices and PalmOS (the Treo being PalmOS of course). But it won't be available here for a while yet.

Re: iPhones

[littenz.livejournal.com]

The serious questions to ask are:

how many books would this replace?
how much longer would I have to work in a job that is sucking my lifeforce before the escape vortex is complete?

Re: iPhones

[threemonkeys.livejournal.com]

Thoughts never far from my mind in any contemplation of expense.

Re: iPhones

[strangedave.livejournal.com]

The Palm Pre isn't PalmOS at all, as far as I know.

Re: iPhones

[threemonkeys.livejournal.com]

Oh no, it isn't either. Seeing the first looks, I thought WebOS was just going to be a swished up version of PalmOS. But doing some research now I see its a Linux kernel and new UI. It isn't even directly backward compatible. That was one of the things Palm always did well.

Sigh.

[jack-ryder.livejournal.com]

I have the nearest cousin to that phone (the Nokia 6120c) and, yes, it can do things the iPhone can't (video, cut and paste, forward e-mails, etc.)

It's just that I've touched an iPhone and... will get one when my contract expires (it's really the GPS functionality that has sold me on the iPhone rather than the iPod Touch)

Another factor, which is kind of annoying, is that I've switched to a Mac and I want a phone that plays nice with it.

But I reckon you're going to be very happy with your Nokia. Typing text in is a bit of a bitch though.

[threemonkeys.livejournal.com]

Thank you. Good to have a recommendation from somebody who has a good basis for comparison. As far as I can tell, the only difference between the 6120c and the 6121c is the frequency bands that it operates in and possibly a firmware upgrade to fix a bug or two.

I rarely typed much in the Treo which made the keyboard fairly redundant. But I did like to keep reference documents (typed on the PC) on it so I could pull them up anywhere - the Nokia should do that OK.

[jack-ryder.livejournal.com]

But I did like to keep reference documents (typed on the PC) on it so I could pull them up anywhere - the Nokia should do that OK.

Mine has a preview version of Quickoffice - which allows you to read documents but not update them. Should be perfect for your requirements. You can also update your lj (flickr, facebook, etc etc) with Shozu (but you need to take a photo first as that's what it's uploading.)

[threemonkeys.livejournal.com]

Yes I saw that office viewing software - I thought it a good selling point. A PDF reader was part of the same equation. Hmmm, I like the idea of uploading straight to flickr - thats where my photos end up anyway.

[jack-ryder.livejournal.com]

What's your flickr name? Mine is jackryderau.

[threemonkeys.livejournal.com]

Three Monkeys (http://www.flickr.com/photos/threemonkeys/). I'm not really part of the whole photo community thing, but its a convenient place to drop my latest shots for people to see.