Smartphone advice

[Nowhere]

Yep, I gave in. After voicing, numerous times, that a cellphone is best when kept simple, I think I'm getting a smartphone (do all Symbian devices deserve this name?). Carrier will give one almost for free, I'll be able to install Scummvm, Frozen Bubble and Doom ( ), get EDGE Internet connection if needed; and also mp3 player and camera (even if shitty...) are a nice bonus, since currently I don't have these devices.

But as always in my case I'm trying to keep thing cheap , so I think I'm getting Nokia E50 (black one of course ). Will end up beeing less than 30€...

I'm not sure if its even possible to find phone that's better in some respects than E50 (for example good, for a mobile, camera would be nice; or WiFi) and isn't that much more expensive (especially since the pricing depends on some unknown variables), but...any other suggestions? (the carrier basically has everything that's available in EU from major mobile manufacturers, even if its not on the list from which I choose the E50...which makes choice even harder :/)

[dZeus]

'for free' ?
I suppose you know that of course the real cost will be the difference in subscription between a sim-only and the one with the phone. Often this is very near the costs of the phone you get 'for free'.

I've been thinking about a smartphone myself, but still am not convinced about a number of points (until then, a Nokia 1110 will do the job):
- Does the battery in these things last long enough? (i.e. not needing a recharge when you use it for 1-2 hours of using its calender/emailing)
- How does syncing calender/mail work exactly? Do you need windows mobile 6.1 to sync with for example outlook 2007? Or can you sync the calender in outlook with any mobile OS?
- Is the miniture keyboard in any way usable? Or is a smartphone with handwriting recognition way better?
- How does webbrowsing work? Does it always go through EDGE/UMTS/etc, or can you use bluetooth/WiFi to browse 'for free' if available? Without the option for the latter it seems rather expensive to me.

[VJ]

I have experience with both Symbian (Nokia 6260, Series 60 2nd edition) and Windows mobile (HTC TyTN, wm 6). Synchronisation with Outlook is easy with both of them (needs Nokia PC Suite or ActiveSync respectively; it syncs contacts, calendar, notes, ... - I haven't used mail-sync but it ought to work). For both devices there is a large free softwarebase (just do a search for s60 freeware or pocketpc freeware, also check out smart2go for a free navigation software for both platforms). If you intend to use the phone for data (email, etc.), I would recommend getting one with wifi: otherwise you need your dataplan for everything (and browsing, mailing using your home wifi network is actually fun); this was the main reason for me to upgrade from the 6260. I then chose the TyTN for the qwerty-keyboard, and as I wanted to run the windows mobile app. PocketFMS. My brother now has the HTC Touch, which also is a very cool device (feels like Apple-quality!).

I personally feel that Symbian is more mobile friendly then wm6, e.g. when it comes to controlling the device with one hand, but htc has added user interface components to improve wm6 in this aspect.

Either choice, will give you a fun and useful device!


Jorg

[Nowhere]

Thanks for input guys.
I also think that WiFi might be very usefull...so it seems I have to hope that in a month the upcoming E5[B]1[/I] will turn out to be cheap enough (seems it'll be the cheapest one with WiFi...).
This might turn out to be a bit funny, since the only superfast internet connections I have acces to are...few WiFi hotspots. BT on mobile phone with 2/4 GB flashcard?

As for keyboard type...I definatelly want something that looks like a typical phone. If you look at the pictures, you'll see how "normal" E50/E51 look...And the thing how cheap they are is obviously a nice bonus.

BTW dZeus, I'm perfectly aware of this (though here the difference between getting for a discount and not getting a phone is not in lower subscription, but wether you can opt out at any time). But in my case, the phone will be "free" (one of my relatives suggested getting one for me (old phone is dying) from her deal with the carrier. And in company-type deals the phones are really cheap. Yep, the carrier doesn't care)
I'm actually using prepaid...

[Nowhere]

OK, so I got the E50, even cheaper now, 24€ (E51 isn't even available yet/will surely have silly price)

It's...rather nice, and moderatelly easy to get used to.

@dZeus, answers to your questions:
- can't comment on the battery...recharging wasn't needed yet (yeah, just got it); but definatelly few hours of playing with it ("I have a new toy!" ) didn't have much impact on the battery

- won't be able to comment on syncing, don't need it

- keyboard on this model is great, but it's still "old style" mobile phone keyboard and you have to get used to "joystick" if you haven't already (luckily this one feels solid)

- webbrowsing is perfectly useable, I have two great free options: built in browser based on Webkit (same engine as Safari on OS X; presents full view of the page over which you scroll) and Opera Mini (uses Opera servers to reformat pages for mobile screen rendering and to compress them; generally I prefer this approach, unless some page will need full blown browser)
On E51 you can definatelly use WiFi; there's also some project on sf for using connection with your computer (bluetooth or usb) as acces to the Internet...but I'll probably use my mobile other way around



Frozen Bubble is great, right now I'm playing with SID player for S60, and there's still Doom, Duke Nukem 3D and mobile IM apps to check.

And 2GB flashcard to buy...too bad I can't find Last.fm scrobbler for S60 :/

[VJ]

I'll check my software list for S60... But definately get the games miniblaster and Vexed. Doom is hard to play, but you can really turn heads by showing it off! Useful programs (if you have dataconnection) are Nokia Search, Google earth, ...
Not strictly Symbian, but very useful is the scientific calculator Calc.

Jörg

[Nowhere]

Thanks for suggestions; I might also post some once I'll decide which software I've found is good (though I'm a bit worried with doing to my phone the same thing one does to Windows by constantly installing/unistalling apps )

Unfortunatelly Vexed doesn't work on S60 3rd edition...and it seems there's generally not that many freeware apps available :/ (I noticed that it's generally redundant to browse more than one site with recommendations, not much of them is possible...for example I've already stumbled on miniblaster)

This lack of freeware alternatives is especially irritating in one case...on non FP1 3rd edition devices voice recorder is limited to...60 seconds

[Nowhere]

Oh, and strangely there are many free alternatives when it comes to filesystem viewers/explorers...anything particularly good about, say, one of them?

[VJ]

My device is a v2... but there is interesting software here (also for 3rd): http://3lib.ukonline.co.uk/nonags.htm

This has some interesting stuff too (e.g. the mobile webserver):

http://opensource.nokia.com/projects/index.html

Jörg