I need a new cell phone - help me!

[Racerbvd]

I've been pretty happy witth my HTC Touch, and check e-mails almost anywhere

[JavaBrewer]

My son's prize for doing such an awesome job his last year of elementary school -



If you like texting, or listening to music, this phone is great. Personally I hate mobile phones and leave mine at home as much as possible.

[red-beard]

Originally Posted by the

How I will use it - basically as a portable office to read and respond to e-mails, which may often include attachments, and to look info up on the Internet that I need to get while "on the scene." I don't need to use it one handed, finding a surface is fine.

No overseas travel.

I do have an iPod and of course iTunes. To be honest, I don't use it all that much, but it would be kinda cool to have all the songs on the phone.

I won't have hugely long e-mails to read and respond to, but more than one liners. Stuff around the length of your post would be average. But they need to be "proper" e-mails - fully written out words, properly spelled, proper punctuation and spacing, etc.

I meant to go to Verizon today to look at Lendaddy's unit (har har), but will have to do it tomorrow.

It sounds like to me you would do well with the HTC TyTN II aka AT&T Tilt.

[lendaddy]

FWIW, the Samsung can store your music and has headphone outputs. It also has a MicroSD card slot for removable storage.

Rebeard knows his stuff and really helped me when I was looking. The only thing I would push that he doesn't is the tactile dialing buttons. Mine has a touch screen too but I would never bother to dial with it as the buttons are so much more convenient.

The downside of the Samsung for your needs is the screen is 25% smaller than the Touch or other "full screen" models. It still works fine for me but bigger is better in the screen department.

[slakjaw]

This one came out today. Its very iphone like and is getting good reviews.. Samsung Instinct

I am keeping my why-phone but this thing sure looks cool!

[stomachmonkey]

Originally Posted by slakjaw

This one came out today. Its very iphone like and is getting good reviews.. Samsung Instinct

I am keeping my why-phone but this thing sure looks cool!

We are going to see a lot of these iPhone knock offs.

People love to take shots at Apple and sometimes deservedly so.

Say what you will about market share, proprietary systems, business models like iTunes etc... but it's clear to me that Apple/Jobs are leading the way in consumer electronics trends.

[island911]

Originally Posted by lendaddy

...
The downside of the Samsung for your needs is the screen is 25% smaller than the Touch or other "full screen" models. It still works fine for me but bigger is better in the screen department.

. . .But they are mostly all QVGA and ~3". - The only phone (that I know of) that bucks that trend is the iPhone at HVGA and 3.5"

Originally Posted by stomachmonkey

. ... these iPhone knock offs.

...... but it's clear to me that Apple/Jobs are leading the way in consumer electronics trends.

The HTC touch was out, on the market, when Jobs announced the iPhone. With iPhone 2.0 on the way, Apple be closer the smaller size of the HTC touch.

--I suppose that Apple appears to be 'first' with every single gizmo, feature and architecture when you're wearing the Apple blinders ...only seeing what apple releases. (certainly everything else must be crrrrap, not worthy of your attention. Only electronics packaged by Jobs have been blessed as counter-culture non-corp -cool)

[slakjaw]

I am not sure if Samsung was trying to take a shot at apple or not but Lets remember that competition is a good thing. CNET says good things about the Instinct anyhow.

In my line of work I need Direct Connect (or push to talk) Thats why the iphone and others don't really appeal to me.

[lendaddy]

Originally Posted by island911

. . .But they are mostly all QVGA and ~3". - The only phone (that I know of) that bucks that trend is the iPhone at HVGA and 3.5"

Looks like you're correct, I always assumed I gave up screen size for the 10key but apparently not.

[island911]

yep, Samsung just added area to accommodate the hard buttons.

...the HTC Touch is very small:

[the]

Checked out the Lendaddy phone today, although I only had 20 minutes or so.

Hmm, wasn't super instinctive for me to use, but I'm sure I'd get used to it.

The screen struck me as being very small.

The web browsing was much different than what I thought. It was very, very slow to load anything. The guy had a bunch of excuses for why that was, most of which I didn't understand so I don't know whether to believe or not. (He did say "These phones get used all day," but I wasn't sure what that was supposed to mean . . . do the phones get tired?)

As a sample, I looked up PPOT. Very hard to read and navigate. From what I've seen on the iPhone (the videos on the iphone site), it is much better for web use. The screen is larger, and the touch scrolling and enlarging and shrinking of parts of the page seem very slick.

I think I saw that HTC Touch there. Too small, too hard to work for e-mailing, not good for what I need.

[lendaddy]

Browsing is tedious unless you're on WiFi, even then it's not great but you do get used to it. You'll find you don't browse much anyway, only when you need info rather than for leisure. For that purpose it's fine.

I don't think any of the others are better sans the iPhone which isn't any faster but has a better screen and interface.

[island911]

Originally Posted by the

..The screen struck me as being very small.

The web browsing was much different than what I thought. ...

As a sample, I looked up PPOT. Very hard to read and navigate. ....

Yep! Tha's why I'm saying forget the phones for web ...other than in a real pinch.

Here are some comparisons for ya...

a 30" 2560x1600 and a bunch of portable devices



Close in on the portable devices; Nokia N800 (800x480) and in back is the Samsung Q1U (1024x600) and the bitty iPhone screen (320x480)


The Nokia has 2.5x more pixles than the iPhone and is (in my mind) the bare minimum for getting around on the web. ($200 and pocketable web, tunes, and all sorts of apps available . .Skype phone if that works for ya) The Q1U is a fully functional xp cmptr.

[lendaddy]

OK, a few times for you:

Time to fully load Pelican O/T page from off(includes cellular data connect time)- 35 sec

Time to fully load Pelican O/T page from another site (already connected to data)- 20 sec.

Time to fully load Pelican O/T page on WiFi - 13 sec

It's slow but it gets the job done.

[Porsche_monkey]

I spend too much time on Pelican as it is...thanks, but no thanks. God I hope I can retire before these hideous devices become mandatory for me.

[lendaddy]

Originally Posted by PBH

I spend too much time on Pelican as it is...thanks, but no thanks. God I hope I can retire before these hideous devices become mandatory for me.

Agree and I can count the times I've been on Pelican with my SmartPhone on my fingers. It's a good tool for finding info you need but it's not fun to browse casually with.

[Porsche_monkey]

I will admit they could be very useful, GPS, looking up phone numbers, tranny rebuild help in situ etc ....

I just know that it would become an addiction, and a way for customers to contact me 24/7. Use with caution I guess.

[slakjaw]

+1

I dont want my email to follow me everywhere I go.

[the]

Checked out the iPhone. The web browsing is really, really cool! Very workable for viewing large pages, the way you can navigate around, then blow up and shrink what you want to see, is very slick.

But, the iPhone, I found, is very hard to type on. The touch screen was very difficult for me to use accurately, I was hitting the wrong keys all the time.

An iPhone with a slide out keyboard like the Samsung would be perfect!

[slakjaw]

Then try the HTC mogul.