Advice on Cell phones Smartphone/PDAs

[ALBPM]

We should get them in a week or so....

325 Pounds...!!!! That's way too high.

[Paddy]

I've seen it for £60 as part of a 12month contract.

[Helevitia]

My treo is dying a slow horrible death. I have to retrack the touch screen every other day, the battery drains in half a day even on standby, the still and video camera quit working, I left it out in the rain for 24 hours(though it was still on when I found it!) and I dropped it yesterday and watched the memory card and battery cover go flying one direction while the phone went flying another direction across the parking lot. I've really had bad luck with this phone. I'm thinking of buying the PPC-6700 since I can get it for $289 with employee discount(hooray!) I've played with my buddies phone and it seems very nice. It has evdo and wifi. And the new Treo700P this is supposedly coming out in Juuen on Sprint seems to be just an evolution of the 650 :/

Jamm, I know it's a nice phone, but what are the negatives? How does bluetooth headsets work for you? Can you show pictures in video in widescreen mode? Meaning, can you view them sideways, I know they won't be widescreen. Thanks!

[Jammrock]

Jamm, I know it's a nice phone, but what are the negatives? How does bluetooth headsets work for you? Can you show pictures in video in widescreen mode? Meaning, can you view them sideways, I know they won't be widescreen. Thanks!

Negatives ... it uses a Microsoft operating system? Sorry, had to say that. The phone has a lot of problems unless you have the newest ROM update, which fixes a TON of stuff, and the phone is much better and more stable. With the newest version there is not a lot.

The built-in usable memory is not a lot, so you will want a miniSD card for the phone (I got a 1 GB card from NewEgg.com for $42).

Beyond that, the rest is fairly minor. There is no J2ME on the phone, but you can get an emulator from IBM (I use it for Google Local and Opera Mini, which I think is much better than the built in IE because it scales the images and uses less bandwidth (not that I care )). It takes a week to get used to the onscreen dial buttons. Despite what people say online, you can use your fingers to dial. I use my big fat thumb to dial numbers and never hit the wrong button, but the proximity of the buttons scares people at first.

And the display isn't as pretty as the Treo 650 ... but that's has more to do with MS than the phone itself.

And using EVDO sucks the battery life down very fast. Talk time is great (nearly 4 hours, 3-4 days on stand-by), but a lot of web smurfing will force you to recharge often. Which is typical for EVDO in my experience.

I do not have a bluetooth headset yet. People who do have them don't seem to have problems with them. Most problem's I've seen are associated with buying very cheap headsets.

I can get picks up later today. Overall it's a very good phone. As you read, I would recommend it over the 650 any day.


PS - you MUST have ActiveSync 4.1 to upgrade and sync with the PC after the update.

[ALBPM]

Ok, we finally got the Axims (51v) last week and I've been busy playing with the new Toy and haven't posted back....

I did the AutoSync hack so it wouldn't startup and try to Sync every 5 minutes when undocked. Sync Hack
And a few other adjustments to maximize battery life.

Anyways it's fast compared to the PDAs I played with in the past. I have the wifi and BT working and installed the Navteq GPS software with no issues. Been playing with the GPS quiet a bit this weekend. Now that i have the software I ordered an OnCourse SiRF Star III so the wife can use the BT-309 that came with the Dell package. It's a trip to just pull it out anywhere in town and find a wlan to connect to and cruise the web.

So, after a week of playing with them neither of us have locked them up or had to do a hard reset

This is my first PDA so I don't have anything to compare the Axim to..... Arrrr!!!