I want to buy a new cell phone, but am a bit baffled by a) the amount of information b) the lack of information about the things you care about.
Since we’re with the “tech(y) crowd” here, seems like a good place to ask
I’m looking for small but stylish cellphone with a couple of advanced features, most importantly calendaring and tasks. For now the Nokia 6300 is at the top of my list, but also a couple of the Samsung and Sony Ericsson models. I do not want a full-blown PDA (small keys, too many unnecessary functionality).
Ideally it should support iCal format so I can sync with Thunderbird and Lightning; I set this up for 2-way sync between Gmail Calendar and Thunderbird; for now I ‘sync’ with my iPod but want to sync with the cellphone instead. I also saw some phones support an interesting-looking protocol called ‘SyncML’. Unfortunately that does not seem to work too well with Linux for a lot of phones…
I’ve been thinking about getting an iPhone also… but I’m not sure; I don’t like Apple’s attitude about wanting to have everything under their control.
Must-have:
Stylish or classy design
Lightweight
Big, comfortable keypad
Good Calendaring and Task List, Address Book
Option to set ‘vibrating pulse’ instead of/together with ringtone
Easy way to sync files to and from either Thunderbird or Google Calendar
of course it is impossible to answer your question…we don’t even know
which country you live in…nor what is available there…nor, do you
need a multi-band phone so you can take it with you when you visit North
America, South America, Middle-East, Europe, Asia, etc (they all use
different frequencies, protocols etc, see
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GSM_frequency_ranges>)…
but, that said (and imo) you should at least look at some phones which
use open software (google: open source phones)…for example, Motorola
RAZR is a series of phones which use Linux as their OS (google: motorola
razr linux)…and they are being replaced by Motorola SCPL phones
(google: motorola scpl linux)…
good luck…things change daily…the perfect phone will be old news soon…
nor, do you
need a multi-band phone so you can take it with you when you visit North
America, South America, Middle-East, Europe, Asia, etc (they all use
different frequencies, protocols etc, see
Yup, I live in Belgium and I’ve been visiting South America on an almost yearly basis by now! :-o I want to see more of the world in the years to come and travel to places like South Africa, Thailand, Japan, … which is why I figured I might as well get the best coverage I can get.
i hope that i can help you,i’m a maniac for technology,especially for mobile phones…
i 've a nokia N95,i think it’a complete phone because you have all that you can need from a phone E90 is another very good phone but its price is higher,it depends from your budjet…
n95 has :
-phone and all normal functions that you can request
-mp3 reader with 8 gbyte of memory
-5 mpixels camera with video and photos(i’ve its photos on my desktop,it’very good)
-nokia gps integrated navigator(but you can install tom tom too)
-radio
-wifi(this is something of great,wherever i go i can find free wifi zones,it’s my only connection with my country when i travel)
-java(you can install all possible application and you can find them in the web)
-umts internet connection
-dvx reader
-then there are a lot of other applications…
i dont’know us prices but here in europe (i bought mine in estonia because it was cheaper)this model prices are going down.
I would investigate Sony Ericsson’s offerings. The k800i and k850i cybershot phones fulfill most of those requirements and have an adequate calendar and excellent contacts support (for a non-smartphone). I’m not sure about syncing them, though.
The Palm Treo 600/650/680 sync very well with Linux.
Well, I always told them, when there is something serious wrong, you will hear about it.
I once came home a week later as planned. We got stuck somewhere in the Nepal Himalaya (bad weather, no domestic flight came through for ten days). Almost no news about it came through. It was not the cause of great panic. And afterwards even my boss gave me half of the days I did not show up.
I have no idea if it is the proper “band” for you, but I just got a Moto Q 9c from US Cellular for $99 (US, of course).
It is a compromise between a full-blown PDA and a regular phone, from what I’ve heard; it’s my first PDA-type device. It meets all of the prerequisites that you listed, except for the size of the keys, perhaps. I’ve got pretty big hands, though, and it does fine for me.
The thing I like is that it interchanges calendar, tasks, and contacts properly with openSUSE 11.0 w/KDE via bluetooth. The problem is syncing–it’s not easy to get going in Linux. After several hours wrestling with SynCE (those guys are doing good work, it just didn’t work for me, though), I started a three-way sync with Google calendar that works perfectly. I downloaded an app called GMobileSync for the phone (a Windows Moblie 6 device) that synce perfectly with Google, and then a program called GCalDaemon that syncs perfectly from Kontact to Google. It’s really not a bad idea, cause now my wife can log in and see my calendar from her work.
Oops she has bought the Samsung… but I vote for the N95 as well. A beauty, all the functions you’d ever want. The -only?- smartphone that has is all.
I don’t know how the subscriptions work out in Belgium, but in The Netherlands it is free/gratis with a subscription of €17,50 mnth. Add €10,= for unlimited data transfer and you are good to go.
“Snoepje” http://cinq-marquis.nl/Blog/media/1/20080730-N95BL8GB.jpg
Cinq-Marquis wrote:
> Oops she has bought the Samsung… but I vote for the N95 as well. A
> beauty, all the functions you’d ever want. The -only?- smartphone that
> has is all.
> I don’t know how the subscriptions work out in Belgium, but in The
> Netherlands it is free/gratis with a subscription of €17,50 mnth.
> Add €10,= for unlimited data transfer and you are good to go.
> “Snoepje”
> [image: http://cinq-marquis.nl/Blog/media/1/20080730-N95BL8GB.jpg]
>
>
Just an FYI, she is actually a he.
as i’ve already said for me the best one now is nokia n95,but i’m curious to know something more about next mobile phones generation where we will not have more a symbian system (that for me now is the best one) but an opensource system linux based.
