I'm trying the Nokia E61 (same as Cingular's E62 but without being crippled by Cingular turning off the Wi-Fi and 3G support). It's very good, too. You can get them on ebay unlocked and just put your Cingular SIM into it. It's thinner than the Ipaq but no camera. It seems to go forever on a single charge and doesn't cause pain when I sit down with it in my pocket.
It has a SIP phone client and I use it at any Wi-Fi to access my home Asterisk VoIP server...free. I can see why Cingular wanted to cripple this feature since, in Europe; I no longer pay $1.35 a minute but $0 a minute. I can put 4 or 5 full length DVDs in it's accessory memory to watch while waiting in airports. I can also keep all our PDF and WORD and POWERPOINT collateral in it and have it ready for display or copying to somebody's PC. It doesn't have internal GPS so I use a $60 lipstick-sized Bluetooth GPS http://www.holux.com/product/search.htm?filename=gpsreceiver_bluetooth_index .htm&target=gpsreceiver0&level=grandson accessory that I place on my dash of the car to get solid satellite lock while I have he display near my eyes. This tiny GPS thingymajig goes 8 hours on a charge but has a car charger and USB (from laptop) charger. If you use it with your laptop you can link to Microsoft Streets and Trips. You can get a pretty good mapping application for most phones with internal or external GPS for free: http://www.nav4all.com/site2/www.nav4all.com/eng/index.php It has mapping and talking directions, too. It covers a lot of the world...amazing. ...and, this phone doesn't crash all the time like my Palm used to. . . . j o n a t h a n -----Original Message----- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Patrick Leary Sent: Monday, January 22, 2007 1:05 PM To: WISPA General List Subject: RE: [WISPA] SmartPhone Happiness... Nice OT thread guys; I am learning and hope others chime in. Patrick Leary -----Original Message----- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Travis Johnson Sent: Monday, January 22, 2007 10:50 AM To: WISPA General List Subject: Re: [WISPA] SmartPhone Happiness... 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. > > -- WISPA Wireless List: wireless@wispa.org Subscribe/Unsubscribe: http://lists.wispa.org/mailman/listinfo/wireless Archives: http://lists.wispa.org/pipermail/wireless/ ************************************************************************ ************ This footnote confirms that this email message has been scanned by PineApp Mail-SeCure for the presence of malicious code, vandals & computer viruses(190). ************************************************************************ ************ ************************************************************************ ************ This footnote confirms that this email message has been scanned by PineApp Mail-SeCure for the presence of malicious code, vandals & computer viruses(43). ************************************************************************ ************ **************************************************************************** ******** This footnote confirms that this email message has been scanned by PineApp Mail-SeCure for the presence of malicious code, vandals & computer viruses. **************************************************************************** ******** -- WISPA Wireless List: wireless@wispa.org Subscribe/Unsubscribe: http://lists.wispa.org/mailman/listinfo/wireless Archives: http://lists.wispa.org/pipermail/wireless/ -- WISPA Wireless List: wireless@wispa.org Subscribe/Unsubscribe: http://lists.wispa.org/mailman/listinfo/wireless Archives: http://lists.wispa.org/pipermail/wireless/
