Wednesday, February 7, 2007

Smartphone Review

I have a Treo 700w. I've been using it for almost five months, and I'm not that excited by it. First, the keyboard is almost too small to be useful. You can pop of a quick text message, but anything remotely involved is out of the question. Web surfing on a cell phone is a useless experience, I don't care what browser you use. The screen is too small to provide any kind of positive user experience, not to mention the poor speed of the connection (I'm hooked up with Verizon.) It can be useful occasionally, to find a phone number (so you don't have to pay the completely damned ridiculous $1.50 for information), but not much more. Email? Forget about it. In today's world where tech from different companies don't play nice, unless your email account, smartphone operating system, and mobile provider are all on the same page then your screwed, and mine aren't. I can use my phone to check my email, but it isn't push, despite what I was led to believe at the Verizon store where I purchased the phone. Actually, several things I was told by my sales person did not prove true, but pushy lying sales people is another post entirely. Let me just say the email experience is less than ideal. I have enjoyed text messaging, but this is a function available on almost every phone now, and you don't need an expensive smartphone. Camera? Yeah, it has one, but I've never understood the allure of that feature anyway. I have some blurry pictures of my wife and kids on there, but nothing more. I'm not a high powered businessman, so I can't give you any low down on things like Excel. My smartphone has a version of Word on it, but for what? Hell, you can't type anything on it. I suppose I could use it to ferry documents around, but I don't.

I do like my calendar and notepad. For this purpose I use Pocket Informant and Phat pad, yeah, I had to pay extra for those, but they're nice.

I've heard you could connect to your Sling media player, but why?

I may not be the best person to review a smartphone, I'm neither a power computer guy or businessman. The best I can say about the phone is that I can use it to make calls, expensive calls, and I'm addicted to Bubble Breaker.

My advice, for alot less money get a simple phone and a really nice notepad and pen.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Well written article.