I don't quite agree with what your friend or someone has suggested that 6681 can do all the things that a PDA can do. Or to put it differently, it may be able to do most of the tasks alright but there are drastic changes in how things are done. Both technologies have their own advantages and disadvantages and I should also admit that Nokia is much more active with its SmartPhone development than any of the other Windows based PDA and PDA phone manufacturers.
Perhaps I should write a blog entry about the real difference on the AccessIndia site but let me try to explain it briefly here. Before we get into a sort of comparison here, I should make it clear that PDAs are basically three types. A basic PDA with a touch screen having a few buttons and bluetooth and wireless capabilities is the first variety. The second variety is the PDA Phone. This is the most feature rich of all PDA types. In addition to having a touch screen, a few button, bluetooth and wireless, it also has a GSM or CDMA phone built in. And most of the PDA phones also have a built in qwerty keyboard which can be typed on using your thumbs. So, it is also called a thumb keyboard. PDAs without Phone features are not in great demand these days although HP and Dell still produce them. Some PDA and PDA phone models like the HP iPAQ 6515 also have a builtin GPS receiver. The third variety is the Windows SmartPhone. This variety resembles a standard candy bar mobile phone but runs a stripped down version of Windows instead of Symbian or Linux. I haven't worked much with Windows SmartPhones and so I cannot comment too much on them. Also, for the comparison, I would only use the PDA Phone variety as it makes more sense as a convergence device. First things first, a Nokia 6681's or any other Symbian based phone's primary feature is to allow people to make and receive voice calls and text messages. This is given top priority. Whatever additional features you get are bonus. And whatever additional features are there are derived from this phone and text messaging interface. With a PDA Phone, it is the reverse. It is a PDA first and phone next. Phone features are adapted to the PDA interface. As far as technical differences are concerned, PDA phones tend to have superior hardware than Nokia phones although Nokia is catching up with its new line of N series phones. N91 has the best sound quality I have ever heard in an mp3 player let alone phone. The base and trebble effects are just amazing. Other N series phones also have decent sound output but Windows PDA phones have been having very good sound quality for a long time. You can listen to music or books without any hesitation even in noisy environments which is not that easy with a Nokia phone based on Series 60 second edition. The volume is not loud enough. The processor speed and the memory capabilities arer also better but again Nokia is catching up with their N Series. Bluetooth, Infrared and WiFi are standard and some PDA phone models also have GPS receivers. All these features (at least WiFi and GPS) are yet to appear even in N Series. But superior hardware also has its disadvantages one of which is higher battery consumption. Stabilitywise, Symbian phones are better. Symbian is geared towards mobile phones while Windows CE has been adapted from PDA to PDA Phone models. There can be crashes in PDA phone now and then and you may have to restart the phone during this time. You won't loose any data though. All the productivity functions on PDA Phones like Outlook, Calendar, Contacts and tasks resemble your standard Outlook on Desktop. You may not have all the features of the desktop versions, but most of them are there. And the synchronization between your outlook desktop and outlook on PDA is very good. For instance, if you add or change a phone book or contact entry in your phone, it will be reflected in Outlook and vice versa as soon as you synchronize. This is also possible with Nokia phones with the Nokia PC Suite. But with PDA phones, the process is much simpler. Pocket Word, Pocket Excel and Pocket Internet Explorer in PDA Phones resemble their desktop counterparts although with limited features. Nokia phones also have these capabilities with Quick Office but as users already point out, using these applications is simply not realistic because of their design. Now comes the real difference of access technology. A screen reader for PDA or PDA phones, Mobile Speak Pocket is far more advanced than that of Talks or Mobile Speak. Infact, I wouldn't call Talks and Mobile Speak screen readers at all. They are just speech interfaces where as Mobile Speak Pocket is a full fledged screen reader. And like all other applications on the PDA, Mobile Speak Pocket also has most of the features of a desktop screen reader like Jaws but which are relevant and most useful for a PDA platform. All the text navigation commands (reading by character, word, sentense, line and paragraph and the similar feature to Insert+DownArro with Jaws) are available in Mobile Speak Pocket. These makes reading long documents a breaze. Tell me any one of you Nokia phone users have been able to read a 300 page novel in MS Word format on your phones using Quick Word? I used to do this with my PDA Phone regularly. Have you been able to review and edit an excel worksheet regularly on your 6681s? I can do this everyday on my PDA Phone. And e-mail, have you really been able to download all messages on to your Nokia phones and read and respond to them for days at a stretch? Even when using a bluetooth keyboard, it is not so simple. I can do this without any sort of problem on my PDA phone. Infact, I did this using a GPRS internet connection when I was in Bangalore for a few days and I didn't have my laptop with me. All the text navigation commands are available in Outlook too. And Internet, I used to read all my news pages using the PDA Phone through a GPS connection because Mobile Speak Pocket offers the functionality of a virtual buffer and virtual PC Cursor which means that you can read through all the webpages and activate the links and forms just as you do with Jaws on a desktop. Finally, there is Windows Media Player on the device. My 1 GB memory card on the PDA Phone would always be filled with MP3s. Looks like I am getting carried away too much with MSP. But anyway, I would prefer a Windows Ce based PDA Phone over a Symbian phone any day. It is certainly more expensive than a convensional phone. The total cost would be upwards of 40000. This system is a true replacement for a dedicated note taker for the blind such as Pacmate or Braille Note. It is much more than a mere mobile phone. Enough for now. More in the blog... Regards, Kiran. -----Original Message----- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Aruni Arsh Sent: Tuesday, 01 August 2006 6:03 PM To: [email protected] Subject: [AI] PDA and Mobile speak pocket question Hi listers, since we have Dinesh who is currently working with code factory and kiran who has worked with the same in the past I thought of asking this question on the list. I would like to know how effective mobile speak pocket is and what PDAs are available in the market which would be affordable and feature rich. How much appprox does one have to spend on the software and hardware? Some of my friends have said there is hardly any use of the PDA for us when we can have advanced mobile phones like nokia 6681. is there anyone on the list apart from the software developers who is using a PDA? -- best of regards Aruni Ph: +91 522 404-2921. cel: +91 933-584-4700 EMail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Yahoo: aruni100 msn: [EMAIL PROTECTED] skype: aruni_sharma C-103, sec H, Aliganj Lucknow--24. To unsubscribe send a message to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with the subject unsubscribe. To change your subscription to digest mode or make any other changes, please visit the list home page at http://accessindia.org.in/mailman/listinfo/accessindia_accessindia.org.i n To unsubscribe send a message to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with the subject unsubscribe. To change your subscription to digest mode or make any other changes, please visit the list home page at http://accessindia.org.in/mailman/listinfo/accessindia_accessindia.org.in
