[geeks] a cell phone that doesn't suck

[Francois Dion]

On Nov 23, 2007 6:40 AM, James Fogg <James at jdfogg.com> wrote:
> > I can *almost* see having a PDA in the phone, except that
> > most of the PDA software on phones is crappy, to the point
> > where there is almost no point.
>
> All I want from a PDA is email. My tiny Samsung phone with full QWERTY
> keyboard

That's the SCH-u740? Half the department uses those. I looked at
getting one but no possibility of SSH that I could find, even for $$$.
Keyboard is a little too small also for me, and slightly confusing due
to stuff printed landscape and portrait.

I wanted to get a LG VX10000 (Verizon Voyager - looks good and has
decent battery life even with standard battery 240min talk / 480 hours
standby), but same SSH issue (well, I have to go and test one next
week using ajax ssh, if it works...), it has a really really nice
keyboard. It has no J2ME. I am concerned about the screen on the
outside getting damaged though. Anyway... I didn't want to go
smartphone/pda because battery life suck tremendously, but the verizon
rep convinced me that the new Samsung SCH-i760 works really well and
has decent battery life, particularly if you use it mostly as a phone
the majority of time.

Ended up getting it (i760). I do have 30 days. Battery life is better
than expected. It comes with a 1aH and 1.5aH batteries. The 1.5 is
barely bigger. and the device is just the right size to hold in your
hand, very unlike those PDAs that are too wide and not thick enough.
It has ok 320x240 resolution (dpi is dense enough though for cleartype
to work well), slide out keyboard that is pretty good (although better
than Mogul and any device where the keyboard slides in portrait mode -
this is a landscape keyboard, it rocks- it's smaller and not up to the
usability of the Verizon Voyager keyboard, from my limited experience
with the voyager and enV). AT&T Tilt phone might have a better
keyboard, but signal in this area is pathetic.

The 1.5aH battery is showing a little over half the charge after 2
days of usage (including pulling all my email accounts every 30 mins -
no need for faster or push), regular phone use with plain unit,
speaker phone and ear unit. Tested gps with my earthmate bluetooth
GPS. Surfed the  web twice for about 30 minutes and a few times for a
few minutes. Installed software (a black theme I had made for another
device I had before - easier on my eyes and far less ugly than
anything that ships with WM6, "paper" calculator, cLaunch etc).
Watched a 5 min cgi movie. Balanced the checkbook. Checked and typed
emails a few times.

So, this over twice the activity I had done to test previous devices,
and I would be at about 10% battery left after 1 day, which made them
100% useless for me. That's why I kept my old regular LG flip phone
unit for 3 years until I could find a device that would do phone+ but
with the ability to go 3 days without having to recharge, with
actually using the device (not that silly standby - this device with
extended battery can do supposedly about 360min talk, 480hours standby
- so usable is somewhere in between).

Up to now, I'm impressed. The big issue I see with it, I need to get a
protective skin for it or something. Something that would also include
a little cover for the screen would be perfect as it looks like it
wouldn't last very long just loose in my pants pocket.

> > *ALL* of the crippling of phones and other devices is wrong, period.

The i760 is not crippled in any way. I can browse the web using EVDO
(or 1x if no evdo) at almost 1Mbps, use wifi instead if I choose, or
bluetooth. I can even use my laptop aircard or wifi connection and
relay through bluetooth or USB. It has a micro SD I can load from the
laptop (even with Solaris). I can access email from gmail, work
server, home server, etc. It is a WM6 and so I can install about any
app I can think of. Also, it is a touch screen and auto
landscape/portrait switch (a completely different beast from WM5 - not
just from a software but hardware perspective). I can also make it
appear to a PC as a regular USB storage. Or use ftp, or scp etc.

> They even have a service that uses the phone's GPS to provide TomTom
> style navication with voice and real-time driving maps. VZ has spent
> some time figuring out some nice network-based software features. The
> navigator useage isn't free, but if I'm lost I'll gladly pay $3.00 for a
> days useage of a pocket navigator.
>
> http://vznavigator.vzw.com

I haven't tried this yet since I got an earthmate, but does it work
even if you dont have an EVDO signal?

Now, this has not replaced my laptop + aircard, but I dont have my
laptop with me at all time (ie. hiking, riding my bike, most meetings
etc). Beats carrying phone + Tungsten TX too. Now I can carry 1 phone
and with 8GB microSD cards, I can carry a lot of data too...