Best Convergence Phone.

i still can't decide which "convergence" phone truly is the best thing ever. i definitely want one. a device that can combine the features of multiple separate devices into a single more convenient device. i really am looking for the jack of all vs. the master of one. seriously.

my criteria :

GSM : preferably quad-band. i just got my GSM phone and never had one prior when in europe. meaning i was always cell-less. which can be highly annoying i had found. quad-band means i can buy a SIM at the airport when i land and be set for the trip.

WiFi : i want to be able to have a connection at work or at meetings with wi-fi or hotels when travelling or coffee shops. or even at Burning Man where there is wi-fi... but no cell service. and i don't really feel like bringing a company laptop to the desert personally. but would like something to carry around in case something breaks and i need to fix it remotely.

Bluetooth : i'm not going to ever plug a phone in to sync contacts with my laptop. ever since i've used bluetooth for that... i'm never going to use a wire again. also i dig the idea of using the phone as a modem if needed. and not having to physically plug the phone into the laptop with some funky cable to get a data connection going. what am i? a caveman?

PDA-isity : not really the actual PDA functions. but being able to run all sorts of various applications on the phone on a nice decent sized screen will be great. like a terminal for SSH / email client for direct POP3 & SMTP access / web browser (is there a Mozilla/Firefox build for Windows Mobile?) / VNC or other screen control app / MP3 or video player stuff / Bluetooth remote control apps (like for controlling a computer remotely via Bluetooth like Salling Clicker does) / IR remote application might be cool / map software that is GPS capable ... and all the other billion of cool random apps for PDAs these days.

Camera : nothing super fancy... but nice enough to take a decent not-entirely crappy picture if needed. hopefully decent enough to leave my small 3.2MP Kyocera at home most the time. not that it is a huge camera... but i'm really looking for the 'one device only' ideal... and frequently have to decide if the camera is more worth a pocket than my wallet (unlikely) or my phone (also unlikely... but possible).

Card Slot : presumably SD and SDIO compatible. for like a 1GB card or so for storage. it would be nice to be able to possibly get a GPS unit for it at some point. though an external Bluetooth GPS might be good enough... though a card GPS might be better as not to get lost and not needing batteries.

Thumbboard : i don't feel like using an onscreen keyboard for emails or for browsing or for taking notes. and i definitely don't want to rely solely on predictive text on a 3-per-key keypad or having to use Graffiti. i want a normal QWERTY thumbboard style keyboard. i had one on a 2-way radio pager before and after a few days got plenty fast at using it... enough that it wasn't a burden or cumbersome at all.

Price : not costing as much as a laptop. i'm looking at like $500-600 tops. i probably won't be able to get any of these at any carrier up here. and would want an unlocked phone. so that means buying a non-contract unlocked phone off eBay or a place like Expansys.

so this is what i came up with so far... none really have all the features i want ... at the desired price.

Treo 650

at first i was super excited about the pre-release rumors concerning the Treo 650. it seemed like such a cool device... at least in rumored form. once it was actually released however it had a few problems that i just can't overcome to justify it's price.



good things:

• general form factor
• Palm OS
• built-in Bluetooth
• quad-band GSM
• EDGE data connection
• built-in camera
• SDIO slot
• thumbboard
  

bad things:

• no freaking wi-fi... i can't believe they released it without wi-fi. the PalmOne wi-fi SDIO card doesn't even have available drivers for the Treo... so even if you bought their own card it won't actually work. someone hacked some drivers to make it work... but it requires rebooting the phone. not exactly a daily use solution. and even if it did work right... the PalmOne wi-fi card doesn't have built-in memory available like the SanDisk combo wi-fi/256MB card you can get on Pocket PC.

• only 32MB of RAM. and only 22MB available to the end-user. due to new memory management... the actual 22MB 'grows' the data... so a normally small app on a Treo 600 will use more disk space on a Treo 650. sure... you could add a 1GB SD card for more data storage... but not if you have a wi-fi card in the slot.

• Bluetooth has the DUN (using it as a modem for a computer) disabled on some carriers. not a big deal since no one sells them here on contract anyway. hopefully the unlocked/unbranded no contract ones don't have such a limitation. since it has EDGE (and inexplicably we have EDGE service in Alaska) DUN would probably be something i would actually use.

• $699. for the unlocked one direct from Palm. it was $599 for a few days. $599 almost sort of made me look past the other problems... $699 would take more convincing... like built-in wi-fi.

• built-in camera is only 640x480. kind of weak these days. better than my T637. but not good enough to make me use it as regularly as a "real" camera. 1.3MP would make me leave my regular camera at home most times. not for serious photos though. the Treo camera does take *decent* pictures though... compared to the Treo 600... just a basically unusable size.

• Palm OS 5.4... this is getting sort of old hat. where the hell is the Cobalt / 6.0 OS? a non-multitasking OS is sort of pathetic in 2005. even for a PDA.

so all in all... until the wi-fi gets fixed... i probably won't bother. and even then... it'll probably be outdated and outclassed by the time that happens. maybe the (entirely ficticious) Treo 700 will have these things fixed. or maybe Palm will be out of business by then. which is a shame... because i like Palm OS (in general) better than Windows Mobile.

BenQ P50

this one got me super excited once i got disenfranchised by the Treo 650 after it's released specs. this one seemed way better. sure it ran Window Mobile 2003.... which will be a bit of a pain seeing as i run Mac OS X. but not entirely unusable... and the next (in Tiger?) version of iSync is supposed to be more 'open' and allow developers to more easily create modules for different devices. this was the one i was totally going to get... especially when i saw a pre-order price on Expansys for a mere $449!



good things:

• built-in wifi
• built-in Bluetooth
• 1.3MP camera
• decent built-in memory
  
• quad-band GSM
• SDIO slot
• thumbboard
  
• no external antenna nub like the Treo
• looks pretty good in person (i thought)
  

bad things:

• no EDGE data connection.... GPRS only. so were talking 14kbps 1990-era modem speed. not the end of the world... especially with the built-in wi-fi.

• Windows Mobile 2003... not the worst thing in the universe... all the apps i would want are available in some form for Windows Mobile. but syncing would be a bigger pain than a Palm OS device. and in general i like the Palm OS better... even if it isn't multi-tasking right now. the other thing is that the P50 isn't even out yet... and still is shipping with 2003. 2005 "Magneto" has been announced already... and the guy at the BenQ booth at CES said the P50 won't be upgradable to 2005. so by the time it actually ships it'll have an outdated (or close to outdated) OS.

• price... sure Expansys had a pre-release price of $449.... too bad it was a totally bogus price. at CES BenQ released a list price of $900. nine. hundred. dollars. that just a bit much for a PDA. even if it does have all the features i do like. $900. wow. the BenQ guy insisted that was just 'list price' and it could be around $500 'retail'... but i assume that is with a carrier subsidy.... which i won't get.

• still isn't even shipping yet. so even if i had (and felt like spending) the $900 i couldn't get it. it'll probably be obsolete as well by the time it actually comes out. i think Q3 2005 was the proposed/rumored release period.

HP Mobile Messenger / HP hw6500:

this one was just recently announced at the HP Mobility Summit. so that means it'll probably arrive in the showroom sometime in 2007. well... actually HP seems pretty on top of things and are a big enough company it might actually arrive this summer... mid-2005 is the current rumor. this one has me pretty excited .... minus a few things of course.



good things:

• fast processor (520MHz!)
• quad-band GSM
• thumbboard (that looks easier to use than the Treo/BenQ ones)
  
• EDGE data connection
• 1.3MP camera
• decent built-in memory
  
• built-in GPS with software (wow!)
• no external antenna nub
• Two Expansion Slots : SDIO slot and miniSD slot

bad things :

• no built-in wifi... grrr. so close to being perfect. but then... wait... doesn't it have a SDIO slot? doesn't it run Windows Mobile? which unlike Palm OS has several card options and plenty of drivers? yes... but look at the picture again. the slots are on the side. wi-fi SDIO cards are *long* cards... meaning the card would stick out the side of the unit about 1/2 an inch. 1/2 an inch isn't bad if it was popping out the top... but side-slottin' won't really be convenient at all. actually it would be totally 100% inconvenient. maybe if they made a build-to-order option to replace the built-in GPS radio with a built-in wi-fi radio it would be better... as a GPS card would be more a special use card i wouldn't mind having to side-slot and plugged in only sometimes.

• screen resolution... it's only 240x240. a bit on the small side. and a new (?) size for a Windows Mobile device. so i don't know if the non-standard slightly small size will cause any application layout issues.

• not out yet... and no price listed or rumored. hopefully it'll be around the HP 6315 in price... meaning able to be found for around $500-ish. hopefully.

• will ship with the older Windows Mobile 2003 (just like the BenQ). not the newer announced 2005 version. no word on possible upgrades... though unlikely is my guess. PDA makers aren't too keen on offering OS updates it seems.

other random phones i am not really even considering at all (and why) :

Samsung i730 - really dislike the slider design. looks massively fat. and more importantly... not a GSM phone.

O2 XDA II / iMate PDA2K - same deal as the Samsung... but is GSM... but i still don't like sliders. looks big. $900.

Motorola MPx - massively vaporous in nature. will probably never ship. i like the option of landscape laptop style orientation. but when i saw one in person at CES... seemed too big for a clamshell... and the keyboard design seemed to be designed funky-style just for the sake of being funky-style. and hence... is annoying to look at and use. they'll probably want like $78,000 for it too.

Blackberry - looks like a label maker. dislike the proprietary software and OS. as far as i can tell from the website spec sheets... you can't even just check a normal POP3/SMTP account... seems like you need some sort of Exchange-only server component... or an Outlook-only client side forwarder... no thanks. the nicer looking 7100 series don't have a thumbboard but instead 3-per-key nonsense.

HP 6315 - this almost was a contender due to the price... but the snap-on keyboard looks like a pain in the ass to use long term. it looks way too large with the keyboard attached. the processer seems a bit slow at 200Mhz... though i heard it was dual core. and the camera is only VGA like the Treo 650. plus the new HP looks so much better it might be worth the wait.

iMate SP3 - no thumbboard. really is a major consideration for me. decently cheap though.

so that is basically all i have come up with so far... don't think i've missed anything. a few times i've considered even just getting a wi-fi PDA... but that seems like a waste... as it would have a similar problem as my Kyocera camera does now... competing for limited pocket space and thus not get used. and none really seem like a good deal for the price. HP 4350 is looking just way too large. Palm Tungsten C has wi-fi... but no bluetooth... so if i lack wi-fi access... i can't use dial-up networking on my phone via bluetooth. basically no wi-fi access = no access. so no PDA-minus-phone is really seeming like a good deal.

so for now i am just waiting for :

1. cheaper BenQ P50 release prices
2. HP hw6500 with built-in wi-fi or a top-slottin' SDIO slot
3. a made-up Treo 700 with wi-fi and Palm OS 6

looks like i'm waiting at least until mid-summer. oh well.