Axiom Home Page Forums General Discussion The Water Cooler Any cell phone gurus?

OK...so I am in the market for a new cell phone. The contenders are:

Audiovox SMT-5600: I like its size, and it has the functionality that I want/need. Price is right...but I am a bit worried about the Mobile PC platform.

Blackberry 7100: Again, good size and functionality. I am a Blackberry fan. Price is also right. Slightly bigger than the SMT-5600, and the memory is not expandable.

Treo 650: Has everything. Bigger than the other two. More costly.

Anybody have experience with any of these phones? Suggestions?

I have a Treo600 and love it. I wish I had a 650 because the bluetooh is great for a headset.

I've used a Palm for about 7 years and am a heavy outlook user. Perfect combination for me. Email, web, SMS, etc. I compress DVDs on it and have Incredibles, Monsters Inc, and Nemo on a 256MB card. (I use pqdvd.)

Highly recommend the Treo. Yes, it's a little big, but you get used to it. I use egrips and makes it less likely to drop.

My personal favorite is the Nextel 7520 BB. This thing does everything.... I love the service, which has improved significantly since the Sprint merger.

-Tarun

Have you seen the new Motorola Razr V3? Looks so cool and thin!!! unfortunately is available with Cingular only (or you have to pay full price to get it unlocked for use with other carriers). Too bad my fiance vetoed us switching to Cingular!! I could have gotten one free with a new two year plan....

Crazy... I just got a Treo 650 yesterday. I can let you know what I think of it once I know how it works, but at the moment I've used it for one (1) phone call. (And nothing else.)

Uninformed data point - our organization elected to go with Treos for those staff with company phones. People are thrilled with the functionality. Having been a Palm/Outlook user for several years, I would personally welcome the opportunity to carry only one device instead of two.

HOWEVER, more than one of my colleagues reports that the Treo phone reception quality is sometimes suboptimal.

The speculation here is that Blackberry will ultimately be odd-platform-out in the phone/PDA convergence wars. Probably Seattle bias

I ran into coverage problems but it palmone replaced my phone.

I have the Cingular GSM version. Works great, coverage is actually better (especially at home) than my CDMA Nokia, which I loved to death. W/ the AT&T merger, my coverage has gotten significantly better in the Bay Area.

You can try treocentral.com and mytreo.net for additional forums.

One of the cool things I've done is compress some Pixar movies. If I'm somewhere and my 2 year old needs a good distraction, I can whip out the phone and she can watch Monsters Inc for a few minutes. I don't even need a PC or DVD player. Then everyone's happy.

Thanks everyone!

Right now I am leaning towards the Audiovox SMT-5600. I just played with all the phones at the local Cingular store.

The next decision is whether to purchase the phone though buy.com or amazon.com and save about $200 with rebates, or get the phone directly from Cingular.

If I go directly with Cingular, I have the convenience of walking into the store whenever I have a hardware problem and get it dealt with there. If I go with buy.com or amazon.com, I have to deal with them on hardware issues through the phone.

I am playing around with my new Treo 650 right now. In fact, I am making this post from my phone! I have to get used to all the features this thing has, but being able to read and post here from anywhere is kind of a scary thought...

Keep that thing the hell away from me!

Yeah seriously... I have, for quite a while now wanted "google in my pocket." (Ask my girlfriend, she'll tell you I'm obsessed or somesuch.) But yeah, so now I have it, and it's pretty sweet! I have been skimming around online a very small amount, I have yet to make any online purchases over my phone.

Just thinking about the progress in computers over the last 20 years has me seriously wondering what kind of crazy gadgets we'll have in another 20.

(Oh, and this post is from my work computer. I can't use my cell phone here.)

In reply to:

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My personal favorite is the Nextel 7520 BB

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Tarun, just the thought of Nextel makes me cringe. I've had Nextel for the past 4 years and have watched their service slip-slide off into the muck pond. If it weren't for the fact that I need the two-way for work I would have thrown the phone into a canal many moons ago.

*Hopefully* the Sprint merger will help, but I'm doubting it.

Considering how bad the Sprint service is, I wouldn't count on it...

This is very cool too. It's not Treo specific either:

Google

Yeah, I had seen that, it is very handy. It's not quite the same as a full featured internet search engine in your pocket, but it's still a step in that direction. Very nice if you want to make reservations while you're out, or something of that nature.

Google Maps in my pocket. Drooool.

OK....so I just ordered the Audiovox SMT-5600 through Cingular, and used my friend's IBM discount to get a great price on the phone and service rates.

I almost went for the Treo 650, but ultimately wanted something smaller and more phone specific. If the Blackberry had memory expansion, it would have made the decision even more diffucult.

As a funny note, I had problems completing the order online because of an old past due account. So I called, and apparently my old AT&T account from 2001 had a $70.97 credit, so my SS# was flagged at bad. So after taking care of that..they are sending me a check for $70.97, and I was able to complete my order over the phone. I will add that all the people that I talked to at Cingular were very nice and helpful.

Congrats! It's always nice to rediscover "lost" money.

I'll have to admit that I don't know too much about these things. They are more complicated than Denon av receivers. They only reason I have one is because my son was hot about having one. I've used 2 providers. The first provider was a midwest reseller of T-Mobile's service. I wasn't happy with their limited service area, anytime I left town I was out of the service area, and the signal strength from inside of buildings was horrendous. I have since switched to the big V. I got 3 free LG phones in the process. They have way many lights. It's like having a Xmas tree in your hand. And it works everywhere. No more limited calling areas. And I can actually make a call from a room in my house. What a novel idea. WAY I use it for the once-in-awhile long distance call. The rest of the time it's pretty lonely.

I thought TREO made car subwoofers

Actually I can't get google maps to come up because of activeX. I haven't had the Treo long enough to get everything working yet

EDIT: Some searching on TreoCentral reveals that it's unclear why google maps doesn't show up, but it's not ActiveX (although that's the error that the Treo gives.) Anyway, mapquest comes up fine, a little more clunky to navigate that google maps, but you still get maps!

Also, gmail is quite functional through the browser, which I think is awesome. I could configure the email client to connect to it and read my email that way on the Treo, but I like that I can hook up to gmail and preserve the "conversation view"

The Audiovox 5600 is a great phone. Microsoft Smartphone as an OS does work well. Its actually a newer version on Windows CE.
Outside its normal functions here are some that of the thing I do with it:

VNC - remote control any PC with the VNC client
MS schedule - for my meetings at work
GPS - Microsoft Street and MAp with Bluetooth GPS locator
mp3 player - you need to have 512 megs of mini SD memory
i use it for storage - carry all my utils on it for any computer proggies
MSN messenger
Bluetooth Headset works well with it
TXT message
task switcher to kill any lingering memory hogging programs

future things I have yet to try:
MAME emulator
remote control
unix terminal
usb devices like keyboard, wifi,

thing you need to do initially:
create a LOUD ringtone and save it in storage. All standard ringtones are very quiet.
buy a clear plastic screen cover
what its missing:
WIFI

Hey Saturn....don't go to far....I may be using you as a resource.

I have been playing with the phone this weekend a bit.....it is VERY capable. I was drawn to it because of its size vs capabilities.

Can it handle a 512mb mini SD card. I thought I read that it only supports upto 256mb.

So far, I can see myself using the task switcher/killer. I think it is odd they didn't give a way to kill a task. I have been working on designing my own home screen.

VNC? Very cool indeed.

As for the 512 mini SD card working some brand work some have issues getting detected. Try to get the ones that people have tried. Theres one fella who got the 1Gig mini SD to work. I'm curious to see if my USB enclosure 40Gig external drive would work. I'll try it tonight.


http://www.engadget.com/entry/6729483382750249/

The Task killer issue is also an issue with my Dell X50v PDA. Most programs in Pocket PC do not have an exit...which is strange. Each app should have a nice exit or kill function within the app. As for the Task switcher/killer once loaded it will always stay in memory. Funny thing is that since I got this phone I have yet to pick up that Dell PDA. This phone does all that I used to do on the Dell X50v.

I usually shutdown the phone every 3 weeks. Cause if you don't it will slow down...at least MS OS are consistent that way. But if you shut it down you loose evetything that is not in your storage. So keep a copy of your customized ringtone, wallpaper in the built in storage of the phone. When you re-start your phone open up File Manager and copy it back into the Windows directory of your phone so you can select the ringtone or wallpaper from your config menu.

I did a 24 hours Mtn Bike relay race last weekend and used my phone as our campsites mp3 player hooked up to some big Altec Lansing powered speakers. People were saying like that plays mp3's that good?
You need a 2.5 to 3.5 mini plug converter to hook it up into any speaker or reciever.

oldskoolboarder:
Its freeware. It such a small client or server. I run it on all my machines. I can go anywhere in the world and run the app from any usb memory stick or even on the SD card of my Canon Camera and connect to my machines to read email, reboot servers.

The one thing I am waiting for is for a smartphone version of Skype so that I can use my Audiovox as a Voip phone and pay no and minimal long distance charges.

The new generation of phone are Voip or SIP enabled using built in wifi. Thats the only thing this phone is missing. I heard the newest generation Motorola has the Wifi called Edge and does wireless connectivity when there a wifi network available.

The more I have been using the phone and reading about it....I am liking it more and more!

Any suggestions on a Bluetooth headset?

The new generation of phone are Voip or SIP enabled using built in wifi. Thats the only thing this phone is missing. I heard the newest generation Motorola has the Wifi called Edge and does wireless connectivity when there a wifi network available.

-Yes, it's the M1000. It's my company's Wifi chip inside. We're also inside the LifeDrive.

Yeah, the VNC was interesting. You got me wondering if there's a Palm version of VNC.

24 hour race? Cool, which one? I just started cyclocross last year. 40 min is enough for me...

BTW, nice pics on your website. I like the look of your loft, very Bauhaus.

Oh,....Part of Elantec? or Intersil?

curtis: I got the latest top end Motorola. Its crappy. I get issue outside of 15 feet. Next time I will try the Sony Ericson or the Nokia..or even asia market set from the computer stores.

oldskoolboarder: There are 2 major Palm versions

http://www.btinternet.com/~harakan/PalmVNC/

http://palmvnc2.free.fr/

This is the 24 HR. race I do 2 times a year.

http://www.chicoracing.com/index.php

Great info on the Motorola. Yeah that the model I was looking at. The only weird thing was that you would need to open the keyboard to get full QWERTY. Kinda funny key placement. Also I believe the Audiovox had a better screen layout and size.

Thanks. I actually bought another bigger loft which wont be ready till end of 2006 because my speakers were too big for my current place. Don't laugh. My current room with my gear is really only 16x11 which is kinda cramped for the number of people who are always over to watch movies. The new loft will have a room that is 25x23 for my equipment...which is small in comparison to a basement setup but pretty big for a nice downtown toronto posh loft. Luckily enough I got into the loft housing market early and my property has risen since then.