I have recently been made aware that I am receiving a lot of email for technobabbleonline.com and needed a more mobile solution to at least reading my email. There are many solutions out there including dedicated email cellular devices to Windows Mobile-based palm devices to Research in Motion's Blackberry phones/services.
I was on a mission. To find the easiest to use mobile device that included the ablilites to receive and make phone calls, receive, read, and send email, and a task schedualer.
I went to Future Shop, since they have every phone from every provider (Bell Mobility, Telus Mobility, Rogers, Virgin Mobile, and Fido) in Ontario for sale, and started browsing the shelves for interesting email/cell-phones. Preferably I wanted to stay with Telus Mobility because their coverage seems to be a little better than Bell Mobility.
Here are the three I was considering (not listed in any particular order):
I got a chance to handle all of these phones/email clients and see what they were like.
The first one I started with was actually only available at a Telus kiosk in our downtown mall. It was the UTStarcom 6700. This device is Windows Mobile-based phone. It has expandable memory and is compatible with all Windows Mobile software. It has Microsoft Outlook compatibility which is good for most users but unfortunately I don't like Outlook (even though I own a copy of it). I found the Windows Mobile interface to confusing. Get this though, there is no dial pad. If you want to call someone you have to bring up the dial-pad on the screen and push it with your stylus. Kinda defeast the purpose of the phone does it not. On the bright side, it is the easiest to type on becuase of its full QWERTY keyboard and big buttons. List price is $149.99 CAN.
The Second one I looked at was the Palm Treo 650 (by the way, when the heck are they gonna sell the 700m here in Canada?). It runs on the Palm OS and also has expandable memory and thus is also compatible with all Palm software. As far as I'm concerned it's definately the coolest looking of the bunch (kudos to PalmOne for the design). The problem here is that I have owned Palm OS-based devices in the past and have not had any luck getting half the things to work on it. The Palm OS is, however, the easiest OS to use as far as it goes in the PDA world. As a phone it was just too big and bulky. The QWERTY keyboard was also just too small and the buttons were way too close together. List price is $99.99 CAN.
Theres more! The third was the BlackBerry 7250. I've researched the BlackBerry service for some time and have found it to be the most reliable and the quickest way to get email. It runs on the BlackBerry firmware (pretty close to Palm I'd say).I was only turned off by the ugly design of the 7250. It's features are good but not as good at the Palm and the UTStarcom but it's also a lot lighter than them both. It has a full QWERTY keyboard and the buttons are better spaced than the Treo 650. It is 1x ready but not compatible with the EVDO high-speed wireless network. If you're looking for a feature-full phone this is not your choice. It has no camera, like 5 ringtones and cannot play voicetones. List price is $99.99 CAN.
The last one I looked as was the one I decided to buy. The BlackBerry 7130e. Yeah, another BlackBerry. They just keep coming back. Anyway, I liked this one even though it doesn't have a complete QWERTY keyboard or camera. It looked a lot cooler than the 7250 and had better features. It is compatible with the EVDO network and thus compatible with 1x as well. It has double the memory of the 7250 (64MB non-expandable). It also is Bluetooth 2.0 complient where the 7250 is Bluetooth 1.1 complient. I also got a free Bluetooth headset with the phone ($40 CAN value). I was happy with that. It also only cost me $149.99 CAN (it's now listed at $249 CAN). Again If you're looking for features get a UTStarcom or Palm device NOT a BlackBerry. And hey, they're Canadian, eh?
As you can see my choice was the most expensive and the plan to go with it was not cheap as the Windows and Palm devices (UTStarcom and Treo) but the BlackBerry service is much faster.
Check them out for yourself. If you have a review for any of the devices that I have talked about in this article please email them to:
technobabble001@gmail.com
The links in this story all go to the Telus Mobilty Website. I am in no way affiliated with Telus Mobility. For the interests of sanity I preferred to use one website instead of getting links from all over the place. The image in this story is sole property of RIM (Research in Motion of Kitchener, Ontario).
No comments:
Post a Comment