Matt,
It's funny you posted this message today.... I just picked up a new
"test" phone I am trying to replace my Treo 650. I grabbed an HP iPaq
6945 from Cingular for $189 (with two year contract) and have been
playing with it on an off for the last couple of days.
The biggest advantage to this phone is the built-in GPS, along with WiFi
and Bluetooth. There are some neat functions that are already built-in
to the main OS... such as the camera showing GPS coordinates on the
picture when you take it (if you enable that option). Also, many
commercial map programs (TomTom 6, etc.) work on this phone with the
GPS. With a simple car mount and car adapter, you have a full-fledged
GPS device built into your phone. There are also programs that will
connect to WiFi and update GPS coordinates to a website... so you could
have real-time locations for your installers with no monthly fee. ;)
It's running Windows Mobile 5, which is better than any other Windows
phone OS I have used, but still not as easy to navigate as the Palm OS.
The biggest feature on the Treo 650 for me is the SMS messaging. It's
easy to access (single button) and it keeps a chat dialog going with
each person you have talked to. I send and receive over 100 messages per
day, sometimes 200-300. It's quick, easy, and can be done with one hand.
If there was just a simple program that would function the same, the
iPaq could be a great phone for me.
I should also mention I purchased a Nokia 770 Internet Tablet. This is a
pretty cool device as well.... built in WiFi and Bluetooth, running
Linux with a nice GUI. Nice wide, bright screen too. It just doesn't
have a phone or GPS, just WiFi. Still pretty cool for that type of a device.
Travis
Microserv
Matt Larsen - Lists wrote:
It was finally time to replace my Nokia 6800 with 600 hours and a
broken screen from being dropped too many times, so I decided to get a
Nokia E70 phone.
It has been a little bit of a challenge, but it is pretty close to
cell phone nirvana. It has been able to do I have wanted to
accomplish with a PDA or cell phone combined.
The first main issue was getting the phone contacts/calendar/notes
synchronized with my PC. My previous phone was extremely flaky when
used with the Nokia PC Suite software, and only connected about one in
every 10 times. I had to install, reinstall, run a registry cleaner
and then reinstall the software but I was finally able to get a
reliable connection between my PC and phone. Once accomplished, I was
able to get all of my items synced up in a repeatable, reliable
fashion. With all their available resources, I am amazed that Nokia
was not able to this process worked out better.
The second item was seeing how Internet access worked on the phone.
GPRS seems to work fine, but I was more interested in the wifi
connectivity feature of the phone. The E70 will browse for an
available access point and the process for connecting is pretty
straightforward. I have to pass on huge props for the Internet
browser on the E70. I would prefer using the smaller screen E70
browser than the browser on all of the PocketPCs that I have used. It
is that good. It was reliable, viewable, easy to navigate and there
have been no weird format surprises. All told - the Internet access
components work very well. I have not gotten the instant messaging to
work yet, but it looks like other have, so I will still have that to
work on.
The last and most interesting piece was the struggle to get VOIP
working on a cell phone. My cell coverage at my house and many other
places in my service area is very spotty, so I have been looking
forward to having a phone that could roam to wifi and keep my roaming
minutes down to a minimum. I was able to find a couple of links to
guides on how to set the phone up with an asterisk voip server and was
finally able to get it to connect to my office voip phone system.
After all the hassles and reported problems on user forums, I was very
pleasantly surprised by the performance of the voip part of the E70.
It is actually clearer than regular cell calls, with just a little bit
of breakup when the wifi signal gets low. Best of all, my outgoing
calls all go through my office system when I am in range of a wifi
access point, meaning less minutes on my cell phone plan. I should
also be able to use the voip when I go to remote tower sites that used
to not work at all on the regular cell network or incurred roaming
charges.
All in all, I am very impressed with the E70. I am going to
officially retire my iPaqs to other tasks and use this as my primary
PIM/phone/voip phone.
Matt Larsen
vistabeam.com
PS - I purchased my E70 from Tiger Direct for about $435, but they are
also available at voip-supply.com for $385.
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