Phones

[hawkida]

My phone contract is up soon so I'm looking around for an upgrade.

And I'm failing to find one.

What I want out of a phone is this:

- Qwerty keyboard (a REAL keyboard, not an on-screen one)
- Touch screen
- Not running Windows
- Faster than GPRS connection
- Full internet connection, not a walled garden, and at a reasonable inclusive price rather than charged by the downloaded meg
- Can do ebooks on a screen big enough to accommodate a reasonable amount of text

Nice to have:

- Running PalmOS
- Expandable with new programmes and a reasonable number of progs to choose from
- Wifi

I think what I want is the Treo 750p, except I need a GSM phone and that was only ever developed for CDMA and the US market. I "upgraded" to a phone running Windows and didn't get on with it. I found it counter intuitive finding some of the menu options and, worse, it would regularly crash without any indication that it had done so. To get it running again, I'd have to reboot it, sometimes by removing the battery, at which point I'd find over 24 hours of missed calls and texts.

I quite like the new Palm 500v but it's running Windows, it's only available on Vodafone who don't have an all-in web package, and the screen isn't a touch screen.

I like the iPhone more than I expected to, but it fails on having no keyboard or ebook software and also on costing a bloody fortune.

The Nokia N95 looks lovely, is available as an upgrade from T-Mobile who I'm already with and getting a reasonable contract deal from, but there is NO WAY I'm going back from a Qwerty keyboard to tapping out urls and emails on a number pad.

So is there anything that fulfills my wants? My Treo 650 is lovely, but it's showing its age. I'd like more internal memory, a faster connection to the net, and maybe a better quality camera. Oh, and I'd like it to download photo messages - supposedly it's capable but in practise it repeatedly tells me "download did not complete" and a week later I get a T-mobile weblink to look at the message on a computer.

Comments

[pshtaku.livejournal.com]

Hello,
I'm in a similar position trying to find something of almost identical spec! The only thing I have found that looks near on most of the spec is the T-Mobile Sidekick (GPRS instead of 3G though) - all the other options run WM6, and I have to agree, the tendency to invisibly die on you and miss 24hrs of phone calls annoyed me to distraction! If it wasn't for that flaw, I would be happy with 90% of the HTC range of phones.
Good Luck with the phone hunting!

[bohemiancoast.livejournal.com]

I'm still very very happy with my iPhone. I agree the lack of ebook software is a major pain (though presumably some will shortly appear now that there's an SDK). But in practice I'm not having any trouble with the keyboard. I mean, it's not as good as a full size one; but I type at least as fast as I do on my office BlackBerry. For email and web it is the dog's proverbials. As for costing a bloody fortune; yes. It does. Must remember to box up another lunch tomorrow morning; we have several varieties of bean stew available.

[carbonel]

I have a Treo 680, which I think meets your specs. It's the successor to the Treo 650, IIRC, and is a little spiffier.

I'm very happy with it. It's a GSM phone, which is what I assume you want.

[surliminal.livejournal.com]

There it is a sort of expanded Orange SPV phone, Treo-ish size, which has full slideable keyboard - I think the 850? i think it's too heavy and clumcky and like the N95 myself, but it sounds like it meets some of your spec - i saw my bro's one today(not sure about the e-books, I never do em.)

[mstevens.livejournal.com]

Not helpful, but I also bought a windows mobile device and found it as crashy as a very crashy thing.

[epideme.livejournal.com]

I have a 750v and find it a lot better now that it's been upgraded to WM6. I used to have an O2 XDA and it crashed like... well a windows phone.

The treo is by no means perfect and one has to accept it's a palmtop computer first and a phone second (i.e sometimes it doesn't seem to answer phone calls), but it's a quantum leap better than the XDA, it has crashed, but very rarely and obviously. I have a sim only plan with vodafone with all-inclusive data and managed to keep this plan, even when upgrading to this phone contract. I had a 500v for a very short time and the menu system is better than a standard windows phone, but the lack of a touch screen is a killer for web browsing.

[the-magician.livejournal.com]

I'm still using my SonyEricsson P990i which has most of the features you've asked for, and then you'd have to find a suitable contract for the data ... and you can get the P990i for under £100 from some places (or free on contract from many more)

- Qwerty keyboard (a REAL keyboard, not an on-screen one)
- Touch screen
- Not running Windows
- Faster than GPRS connection
- Full internet connection, not a walled garden, and at a reasonable inclusive price rather than charged by the downloaded meg carrier dependent
- Can do ebooks on a screen big enough to accommodate a reasonable amount of text
- Running PalmOS No, runs SymbianOS + UIQ
- Expandable with new programmes and a reasonable number of progs to choose from
- Wifi

alternatively get an N95 and a folding bluetooth keyboard.