December 17, 2007
Hello. It has been a long time since we discussed cell phones. The phone I purchased way back in the day is just now beginning to develop congestive phonebook failure and creeping black call drop. So...
I bought a new GSM, unlocked, gold-colored Motorola KRZR K1 from the Moto Store. If there were a new Austin Powers movie, I would make a trite reference to it here. Now I don't have to get a contract. I'm allergic to contracts.
Anyway, what's this I hear about "free" WAP? Can I have free WAP? Does this work on GSM carriers? What about Ceiling Cat?
9. Choice made. iPhone; 9.
On a more serious note, I have never understood interfacing with the internet by phone. All I know is that with every phone that I have yet owned, it seems like I will be paying a retarded amount of coin to access a nerfed subset of the internet deemed appropriate by my carrier (this appears to consist largely of downloadable ringtones.) I don't know whether to fault 1) the technology, 2) the low bandwidth, or 3) the carrier's monopoly on charging whatever the fuck they feel like. And I'm not even talking about getting the youtubes on my phone, I'm talking about stuff mrflip used to be able to do three phones ago. My response is to throw my hands in the air in frustration and wait a few more generations.
I pretty much have always bought my phones solely according to how well it does the top three tasks on my feature list. In order:
- syncs with my address book and calendar
- lets me wikipedia and check my email
- makes, receives calls
=========== LINE OF GIVASHIT ==============
- looks good
- takes pix
- plays crazy frog when javelina calls
- snds txt msgs
I get the feeling most phones are bought and designed by exactly the opposite ranking.
The phone companies kinda try to keep WAP a secret. When I had a WAP phone (so, up to June) it was a $5 addon -- not the $20 or whatever EDGE will cost you -- and I never used the my.cingular.bork.bork.bork. I think most non-"smart"phones bury <Get me to the internet> about three pageloads down in their stupid monetizing interface.
Also: I would charitably characterize as "ill-advised" the buying a phone on the basis of some externally-dependent hack.
Thanks for the info. Right. Phone priorities. So I bought this phone cuz:
1) it makes and receives calls well
2) quad-band GSM, for travel to foreign ports of call.
3) unlocked, for carrier disloyalty.
All the other stuff is kinda gimmicky. Maybe I'll use the camera, but maybe not. But it will play the Crazy Frog version of "Crank That (Soulja Boy)" when mrflip calls me.
While making this post last night, I remembered that I want to build a rotary cell phone. Now I can. Saccharine!
R.I.P. Treo 650 (October 2005 - December 2007)
My phone started acting up a few weeks ago, with the screen scrolling like an analog television signal with poor reception. Finally, two days later it died, unable to power on anymore.
I took the phone to Sprint where they opened the phone and inspected the damage. The phone was heavily corroded.
I am now using an old phone that I used to have (a Sanyo 8100), which sucks. The. Text. Messaging. Is. So. Slow. And. In. Order. To. Send. Anything. I. Have. To. Log. On. To. A. Special. Screen. And. Then. I. Can. Read. The. Message.
Needless to say, I am not sending as many text messages as I normally would.
I am in the process of buying a new phone. I think I am going to buy a new Treo just because I love my old one so much, but I am afraid of Palm eventually going out of business because I just don't see them making a profit like some of those other companies are.
Should I buy an iPhone? I don't know. I think I would wait until a later generation.
I pretty much have always bought my phones solely according to how well it does the top tasks on my feature list. In order:
- makes, receives calls
- syncs with my address book and calendar (PDA)
- vibrates
- sends text messages
=========== LINE OF GIVASHIT ==============
- looks good
- takes pictures
- plays "Crazy Frog" when javelina calls
Word on the street is there's a 3G iphone in the pipeline. Who knows when that will be, but you might hold out until Mac Thingy AwesomeCon in January; if it doesn't happen then it probably won't for a while.
I am 100% happy with iPhone. Make sure you like its keyboard before you buy -- txt msgs are so high on your list I think you might be frustrated. Account for the fact that it will adapt to your typing over the first week or so, but this will be a "significant minor improvement" rather than a "zOMg my brain it readz it".
For the near term you can grab a Moto i415 burner, which can be had on eBay for the cost of its included tMobile prepaid minutes. This is a pure Java phone with GPS, and people have made programs to install on the phone that let you not only use it as a GPS pathfinder but also ping the phone remotely to find its location. The prepaid EDGE wireless is something like 20 cents a day unlimited bytes, which makes it a poor man's LoJack/balloon tracker/thingy that OJ stuck under the van in Naked Gun
For all the crazy frog fans out there: 8 remixes of Axel Foley done using sounds from classic 8-bit vid games. Because that song /never/ gets old. (thx Carlo)
If I buy a phone/plan from Amazon, how is the phone number area code determined? By billing address? By Amazon HQ? By angry gnomes?
Well, I tried the iPhone and my thumbs are too big for the little keyboard. Good to know that it adapts because I was getting frustrated.
@Javelina -- you have to call the cell co to get activated. At some point in that process I'm sure the secret will get out.
@Z - I'd put it this way: for typing experience let's call "10" the best currently available PDA keyboard and "1" a morse code interface. If your personal rating was in the 5-7 or better range I'd take the plunge and expect a 1-2 point improvement from the prediction engine (plus a few nifty little tricks they built in). If it's lower than that I'd shop for a keyboardy PDA phone or try to hold out for a good iphone competitor. (Note, however, that after several years of reverse engineering no one's really managed to make a music player that can carry the iPod's jock as far as usability.)
I'd call my current rating of the keyboard about an 7.5 or 8, up from about an initial 6. (My previous phone was generously a 3 or 4.) Tricks that really help:
- the key isn't entered until you let go. If you're typing in a password, use the letter's little flag to shift around and then let go.
- For the alternate 0-9 !-= etc screen, if you hold the alt button and then slide your finger to the number or symbol you want, it inserts that and then pops back to the qwerty. Makes inserting contrac'ns much easier.
- The autocorrection is very very good -- the other day it (correctly) proposed "munging" as a completion. I don't know if it had the word or if it learned it from me, but either way it's impressive that the likelihood model found that. (The word corpus was /definitely/ garnered from tech geeks tho: it's always eager to suggest 'XML' and 'bidi', moreso than say 'OMG' or 'w/'.
- For the autocorr to work best, just let fly and type through errors, then correct at the end of words if it doesn't guess felicitously. It will fix a lot of them, and it's the best way to train the engine.
- I'm hoping that a later update will rotate the keyboard for email/sms composing; the wide kbd is quite nice. As it is, I can happily compose several paragraph email responses without frustration.
iClone roundup -- see if any of the knockoffs float your boat.
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Looks like you have free (slow, tiny) internet until they decide to clamp down on it.
Or just buy an iPhone.
posted by natedogg at 12:03AM CST on December 18