Of all the devices I own, my cell phone is probably my most necessary and frustrating of them all. I keep saying that Cingular has pushed out the iPhone Update to my Treo 650 — two weeks ago, as soon as I signed up to be notified of the release of the iPhone, my Treo just stopped doing the things I carry it for. I hate that damn phone, but it is the only thing I can keep my calendar on that works in the PSU environment. I could probably ask people to run an Exchange server and jump to the Blackberry, but that isn’t going to happen just for my mail and calendar stuff. I find the Treo to have sub-standard voice quality, has sort of lame applications, and it is huge — really huge. But at the end of the day it is what I have been stuck with. As a matter of fact, this past weekend I pulled my SIM card out of the Treo and dropped into my first generation Moto Razor. Why is it that this stuff is so hard?
Funny thing is the device I own that I love the most is my iPod. It gives me hope for the iPhone. Problem is still the whole calendar/mail universe that I need so badly. Right now, there isn’t any evidence that the iPhone will play nicely in our eco-system. From what I understand, it works in an Exchange environment but we aren’t in that world. I am anxious to not have a paper calendar, a crippled phone, and a massive level of frustration over the lack of sophistication in this space. The other side to this is that I really don’t intend to use the iPhone as an iPod. I just want something to work and work well.
Part of the problem, and I don’t care if this makes me a pariah among techies, but way too many technology products focues way too much new features as opposed to perfecting the features that are already there. Cell phones are the worst. UI has become better, as has the amount of droppped calls, but unfortunately it seemed the makers of cell phones were too busy turning them into cameras than making them reliable.
This will date me, but I don’t need the Mach 5 (Speed Racers’ car), I just want something that will get me from point A to point B without breaking down on the highway.
Funny that you should write about this. There was a story I stumbled across on the Fox News site (actually, found it through another news search) In this story, the author comments that the problem with phones seems to be–they don’t make very good phones!
That said, I wrote about my new phone which, since I have Cingular, I think might serve you well as well. It will work with Pop and imap emails, as well as exchange servers, and since it has Windows Media 5 built in, allows you to have access to most of the productivity suite tools you are used to using on your Mac.
While you are at my blog, check out my other commentary on the Civic Hybrid, or the Digital Natives.
Finally, I was led to believe (by my brother) that the iPhone would not work in the exchange environment.
Steve
I did not think that iPhone would work with Exchange… What I meant in detail is that (my impression is that) only email from Exchange will work IF Exchange is set up to support IMAP. In other words, the Calendar and Address Book features of Exchange would not be available. I believe that is still the consensus opinion, since nothing new has been released from Apple. I will be very happy to be corrected…
The problem with the Treo 650, and Palm’s other PalmOS offerings, is that the PalmOS has been neglected and a vortex of confusion for several years now. Palm the hardware company has been doing very well, but Palm/Palm One/Access the software company… not so much.
The advantage of Palm over the iPhone, however, is that you can install another application if you don’t like the one that came with it. Hate VersaMail? Good, it’s awful. Try SnapperMail, which is much, much better. I don’t see Apple allowing much development on the iPhone.
I was where you are with the Palm OS, my cell phone, and my Palm TX a year ago. I jumped off the Palm ship for Windows Mobile as soon as I could get my hands on a Cingular 8525, and I couldn’t be happier about it. Windows Mobile 5 is surprisingly nice and there are a good number of applications available for it. The only drawback to the 8525 is that it is a bit of brick.
So with Jen, and me, That’s two votes for the 8525. Any other fans?
I do have to admit that I am intrigued by the Helio Ocean. No Mac syncing or touchscreen, though.
Yup. I too liked what I saw with the Helio Ocean. Alas, when I blogged on it, it wasn’t quite yet available. And unfortunately, is not compatible with Cingular. Oh well.