Perfect phone?
People will know me, know that I get through smartphones with alarming regularity. I need a lot from a phone; it needs to email, web browse, and do lots and lots of phone calls.
I’ve used every iMate made, and they’re quite good on the PDA front. They do good email, they do good web browsing, but phone calls are a bit random. The last one I had was the £500 JasJar, which was like holding a brick to your head. Voice quality was so bad, it was like doing a bad Dom Jolly parody. Also, I need a phone that can cope with cycling, running, and 40 knots+ on the sea. Needless to say, none of lasted long.
My last phone was a Nokia E70. This was a really good phone. It made brilliant phone calls. By installing Nokia’s Mail for Exchange, I had a phone that was completely synced with the office (email, calendar, contacts, to-dos). The fold-out keyboard was ok, but a bit fiddly for longer emails. But for keeping on top of things out and about, it was without a doubt, the best I’ve had so far.
On Saturday, my 9 year old son, took an unscheduled dunk in the sea. He was fine, but as I went in after him, it turned out the E70 doesn’t like salt water.
So that brings me onto my next phone, the Nokia 5500 sport. So, think E70, but it looks cool, is splash, dust and shock resistant, and it does all the things the E70 does, plus it has a built in pedometer, radio and MP3 player. Officially, Nokia don’t market this with email integration, but if you install the Mail for Exchange applet from their site, it’s all wired up to sync with Microsoft Exchange.
If none of this makes sense, but you want a robust phone that can do the odd email, call my friend Tony Moffa at iConsult (44 1534 844004) and he’ll sort you out.
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2 Responses to “Perfect phone?”
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hi Phil
Congratulations on the award for Webreality! Hope you had a good night at the ball. It must have been earlyish that i spoke with you as I remembered you mentioning your blog…
good read. best of luck with it
cheers
chris shelton
Hi All
On the subject of SmartPhones (Thanks for the plug Mr B), I too have a worrying fetish for phones and am on my 6th of the year…
In my defence however, this is because I would call myself what people refer to as a ‘Power-User’ of mobile email so my search for the perfect SmartPhone (combination of a mobile phone and PDA / Hand Held Pocket PC rolled into one) has been ongoing now for nearly 3 years..
I cannot recommend highly enough the HTC S620.
See:
http://www.htc.com/product/03-product_s620.htm
If you are a Microsoft Exchange user or Hosted Exchange user, then this is the phone for you. I have been a great singer of praise for the flexible range of iMate phones, however, when it comes to SmartPhones no body does it better than HTC. This does run the Windows Mobile 5 ‘SmartPhone’ edition rather than the full version of Windows Mobile 5 Pocket PC edition software.
However, if you are not particularly fussed about using Word or Excel on the move, then this will do the trick. It comes with ‘Clearvue’ - a tool for viewing Word, Excel and PowerPoint documents which works very well.
The Push Technology with Microsoft Exchange is now a superb product (Particularly as a Small Business) and configured correctly, you will be very happy with this combination.
If you do not have Microsoft Exchange, well - speak to one of the local IT providers (or us obviously..).
Al the best
Tony Moffa
iconsultci.com