April 20th, 2005

Filed under:
Technology
9 Comments »

I Need a New Cell Phone

I own the Honda Civic of cell phones. It works fine, and doesn’t break when I drop it. I rarely use my phone–I may go a whole week without making or receiving a call on it. However, I’ve got some new requirements that my current phone doesn’t offer:

  • I’m leaving the country with increasing frequency. I need my phone to work
    anywhere (well, anywhere inhabited) on the planet.
  • Calendar-synchronization would be nice.
  • I’d like to read email remotely, a la the Blackberry.
  • As I’m going to Paris in about 48 hours, I’d prefer to stick with my current
    provider and just upgrade. These
    are the products     they offer.
  • Some kind of note-taking interface (whether a stylus or keypad) would be
    cool.
  • It’s not required, but a camera would probably be fun.

Things I don’t need:

  • Any sort of video or audio storage capacity. I’ve already got an iPod, and
    it rocks my world.
  • Anything that goes in a frickin’ holster on my hip.

My friends and clients at Rococo (a wireless company, so they ought to know)
are all huge advocates of the Sony
Ericsson P800 and 900 series.

I’m taking any and all recommendations. If you think I’m missing requirements,
let me know. If you think I won’t need some of the things I’m saying I do, let
me know. Frankly, my cell phone knowledge is shamefully thin.

UPDATE: I’m looking at the Sony Ericsson Z600, which seems to satisfy my requirements without breaking the bank. Fido doesn’t offer the Blackberry–they sell the (butt-ugly and gigantic) Hiptop.

I fully got the run-around at the store. They advised me that for upgrades to existing plans, I had to call Customer Service and have them send me the phone. As I’m leaving for Europe in a couple of days, that wasn’t going to fly.

I called Customer Service, prepared to be pissed off, but the clerk there fully took care of me. He offered a work-around which, while not entirely satisfactory, should put the phone in my hands by the end of tomorrow. Basically, I buy the phone at full price from the store, then call Customer Service to enable a 24-month plan and they’ll reimburse the difference.

This is perhaps the first time I’ve had a positive customer experience from a mobile provider (though points off for the idiots working in the store, who were clueless about the technology and didn’t seem interested in taking my money).

Comments: 9 Responses so far

John Hedtke
April 20th, 2005
1:25 pm

I’ve been reasonably happy with the Samsung A-670 myself, although I will say that I think the hinge mechanism could be a little more durable. I like the feature set and it does a lot of nice things.

[Reply]

Norlinda
April 20th, 2005
1:47 pm

There’s one other thing to consider when you buy a cell phone/organizer–it has to be user-friendly. You could have all the bells and whistles but you have to curse and swear through the process of finding that one right button, it’s absolutely not worth it.
From a person who doesn’t like cells, I found the Nokia phones in general have good user interface.

[Reply]

Shane
April 20th, 2005
2:37 pm

Blackberry. Everything in one package. It may not be “pretty”, but it will work better than anything else.

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Steve
April 20th, 2005
2:52 pm

Ditto what Shane said. Now that the new Blackberries are GPRS & GSM, they work wonderfully all through europe- mine has been fantastic in London, Paris, and Rome so far. Also all of your other goodies- email, calendar synch, note-taker, and of course the occasional “google on the road” via the integrated browser. It’s not that pretty but you can plug in any standard headset, the new ones are Bluetooth, etc etc etc.
Only thing to look out for is when traveling the “provider seek” mechanism drains batteries very quickly so find one (orange in paris is good) and then set it to manually stay with it, rather than constantly re-seeking whenever the signal fades a bit. Also handy that blackberries recharge batteries right off of a USB cable from your lappie-toppie.

[Reply]

mark
April 20th, 2005
3:13 pm

I recently got a Nokia 6225 and I love it. It has an IR port which lets me sync with my calendar. This feature works really well. It has a camera and radio too, but they’re nothing to get excited about. TRI band. Regular keypad note taking.

But FIDO is GPS, isn’t it? So you can use all the killer european and asian phones. Wait until you get to Paris to buy something.

[Reply]

Darren Inouye
April 20th, 2005
6:00 pm

I’ll third the motion for a Blackerry. I’ve used a couple of different generations and they’ve only gotten better. If you are interested in application type uses (email, newsreading, IM) I’d suggest the classsic querty (pda style) models if you are more of a phone user and occasional application user I would go with the new 7100 series. Even if you don’t moblog directly, composing draft blog entries on these devices is great.

[Reply]

Tod
April 20th, 2005
6:20 pm

You need to get the Hiptop 2 by Fido. (Marketed as “Sidekick” south of the border.) It has an integrated camera (direct to Flickr), web surfing, email, AOL Instant Messenger, connects with Outlook, and more. It’s addictive.

[Reply]

alfie
April 23rd, 2005
3:03 am

If you dont mind too much of a brick, and are lookign for organisational features above most all, the Nokia 7710 is absolutely amazing. It’s the first Nokia series 90 to hit the market (although I’m not certain it’s available in the states yet). It is incredibly reliable, and also comes with an embedded typepad client for moblogging. I posted a detailed review of it on all about symbian

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What Kind of Cell Phone Should I Buy, Again, and Should I Leave Fido?
April 27th, 2008
7:50 pm

[...] years ago (almost to the day), I asked you, my dear readers, what cell phone I should buy: I own the Honda Civic of cell phones. It works fine, and doesn’t break when I drop it. I rarely [...]

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