Mine is on the left. My wife's is on the right. Nicks, scratches, a non-working soft-button... Yeah, I am kind of rough on my phones. All that bicycle riding, dumpster diving, and setting the phone down on concrete takes its toll...
When asking for advice on what new phone to get, I put forth the following requirements
- Decent battery life
- MMS/SMS ability
- WAP Browser (gmail's WAP interface is good enough for me)
- Tethering ability (even if it's under-the-radar like I do with my Chocolate)
- I'd really like a qwerty keyboard, not required though.
- Affordable. Like under $100 after renewing my plan.
Then, it seems the entire world is out to tell me how awesome smart phones are and decide to chastize me for my adamant stance of not needing one. In essence, these folks are preaching about how practical their Ferraris of the phone world are.
The thing is, I carry my laptop most everywhere I absolutely need a computer. Until I can buy a phone that's got 200GB of storage, Wifi AND 3G (or equivalent), and can do some pretty solid web browsing, SSH, and things like that, I really can't justify replacing my laptop with a phone. Therefore, it makes little sense to overlap functionality while spending a lot more on a phone than I need to.
So, I'll put the call out to you, our readers, who might be somewhat enlightened. You might actually understand I want just a phone with a WAP browser, tethering, and maybe a qwerty keyboard, something that I can score for under $100 and use on Verizon's network. I kind of have my eyes on the LG EnV3 (shown left)Also, you're more than welcome donate a VZW-compatible smart-phone to me if you really, really think I absolutely must be converted. You won't find me bankrolling your experiment, though. I'll do my best to go about my daily grind while using it, and try hard not to completely destroy it. Note: I've busted a few touch-screens in my day. Things like BB Storm wouldn't stand a chance with me.
Serious suggestions wanted. Tell me in the comments.
I have a Palm 700p if you want, Its pretty old and pretty beat up but still works fine and has a massive battery for a few days of run time.
ReplyDeleteI would say to stay with the ENV3 as your choice, my girlfriend got the ENV Touch a couple months ago and it just doesn't have the battery life and I believe it is because it has to backlight the entinre face of the phone rather than just the small screen.
ReplyDeleteThe enV1 was the first phone that I ever actually enjoyed using. With that said, I've also got my eye on the enV3.
ReplyDeleteI'm in the exact same position (though a camera is a must for me. I snap quick pics for price checking all the time).
It has all the main & periphery features you (and I) want. And BitPim compatibility (for mucking about in the filesystem) is surely right around the corner.
I was looking at the Touch as well, but I'm not big on touch screens (yet), and the battery comment pretty much seals the deal.
I've been getting by without a smartphone through use of SMS based services like Twitter, notify.me & ping.fm, but it's been tough ever since my notebook died on me. I'm figuring I'll have to cough up the money for a real data plan.
Speaking of which, do you have an "America's Choice Plan?" I loved the old America plans because they treated data as minutes (1mb/min I believe). Free tethering and WAP after 9 was awesome. And since I barely used my minutes, I had enough to spare for using it during the day too.
The current "Nationwide" plans charge .10/mb without a data addon. I haven't used my beloved WAP services since a family member "upgraded" us to the newer plan.
I usually have a camera w/ me, but I do use the camera for quick mobile posting to places like Brightkite/Twitter. It's not a must, though.
ReplyDeleteI had a smartphone back in the day, probably one of the first ever WinMO fones, the Audiovox Thera (a re-branded Toshiba 2032) and it was merely a passable PDA, with America's choice for data. It sucked as a phone. Even today's "smart" phones aren't genuinely awesome at computing nor make great phones.
If I were used to living out of a netbook (say, a first-gen eeePC or something a little better than my Jornada), I might be ready to make the leap to a smart phone. As it stands, I just demand too much on-the-go to ditch my laptop.
It sounds like the EnV3 is the one for me, really. The only thing I really dislike about my Chocolate is the lack of a qwerty interface.
I'll probably swing by the VZW store sometime in the coming weeks and try my hand at using some of my favorite sites using its browser. Thanks for the input so far!
By the way, if you get the V-Cast plan for $15/Month, your phone and plan gets unlimited EV-DO enabled so that you can access high-bandwidth streaming video from VZW. I'll let you figure out what other fun things you can do with that unlimited data add-on. ;)
ReplyDeleteOh I thought those V-CAST plans were a thing of the past.
ReplyDeleteThanks for the heads up. I suppose I'll be watching a lot of Television on my phone now.