Some of the people I work with are the biggest geeks I know.. the latest gadget, gizmo you can think of, they have an opinion about it.. So it was just like opening a can of worms when I decided to consult them on which phone should I upgrade to.
I currently own one of those cheap (free is cheap, right!!) nokia phones from sprint.. I have had this since my college days and it has gone through some really tough times, including me dropping and stepping on it during some of my druken stupors.. but hey, it still works.. it makes calls while some of the other phones I've seen can do everything but that.. but as my last boss would say, "You can make calls from that phone for sure.. but its so huge the radiation will probably kill you in a year." So after being the butt of around 100 phone jokes a month and requiring the ability to check my email and sometimes surf the web for directions, I finally decided to give up my old companion (sshhh.. don't say it too loud. you might hurt his feelings.)..
So now the obvious question was.. what do I get? My criteria was simple::
1. Good call quality.
2. Good call quality.
3. Good call quality.
4. Ability to check email and synchonize calendar with Outlook.
5. Surf the web (which I might do occasionally).
Everything else would be icing on the cake. I liked the Audiovox (Cingular 2125) phone a lot considering its compactness and it can still do what I mentioned above. But according to my colleagues, it had certain drawbacks.. viz.
1. It has a Mini-SD card which does not come in high capacity as compared to SD Cards (due to its form factor obviously..:)..)
2. the Mini-SD slot was behind the battery.. so to change the memory card (which of course, I would be doing every 30 minutes), would require me to take out the battery before I could replace it.
3. it did not have Wi-Fi.. (As if I need another excuse to log onto my office machine from starbucks)..
4. it does not have a QWERTY keyboard.. (the only REAL disadvantage I think, since its a pain to type an email using a keypad).
To make things more interesting, another colleague just bought the new Motorola Q. Now things became really heated. The Q is now compared to the Palm 700w which someone else on my group has.. so here we go.. The Q has a much brighter and wider screen and is thinner.. But it is a Smartphone as compared the Palm 700w which is a Pocket PC. Which led me to ask? What the hell is the difference? and the answer.. Smartphone is a stripped down version of Windows Mobile 2005, basically designed around 1 handed operation while the Pocket PC is an enhanced version of the same OS but has features like touch screen capability and availability of more compatible applications. So whats wrong with the Palm 700w. Well nothing, except its just heavy and big. So there I was asking the pros and cons of the Cingular 2125 and getting the low down on the Q and the 700w. :).. but strangely enough I must admit that I was actually enjoying the whole discussion.. The inner geek in me was nodding to the fact that it did not make sense why the Q had a Smartphone OS when it would have been much better off with a PocketPC OS consdering that its definitely not small like the other less-capable phones. So now that you have made it big, might as well put the better OS on it.
Anyways, I did go ahead and order what I had wanted in the first place. It comes in by the end of the week. Now its upto me to test run it and come up with my own list of likes and dislikes. But I must add, its these discussions that make working for this group a treat!! :).
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IWhile I am an eBay employee, these opinions are my own
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