Symptom of age
Jan. 22nd, 2009 09:42 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
threemonkeysMy 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.
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.
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Re: iPhones
Date: 2009-01-21 10:45 pm (UTC)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.