Making the Smart Phone Plunge
March 27, 2008
I have used a hand held device for years to try to organize my personal data. For the most part they were Palm devices. I have forgotten the model of my first Palm, my second device was a Palm V and my most recent Palm device was a LifeDrive shown in the picture below.
Just for the record, lets get the terminology right. A hand held device for storing personal information is a personal digital assistant (PDA). It amazes me how many people call all hand held devices a “Palm Pilot”. Pilot was the model name of the first PDA sold by Palm in 1996 and for some reason this has become the generic name for all PDA-like devices.
While Palm still makes hardware, the Palm operating system (OS) is used by many other hardware manufacturers and is found in PDAs and phones (called a smart phone). While the Palm OS was the first on the market for hand held devices, the Windows Mobile OS is quickly becoming a more popular OS for mobile devices.
There has been virtually no changes in the Palm OS in years and many feel that Palm is on life support. I hate to see that because I have always liked the Palm interface, particularly their desktop software which I used for most my input and then synchronized with my PDA.
The problem with a PDA is that it is just another thing to keep up with. I sometimes found myself with a cell phone on my hip, my Palm LifeDrive in one pocket and a portable MP3 player in another pocket (as shown in the picture). This was just too much hardware to keep up with, something had to give!
I decided to go with a single device to do it all and make the smart phone plunge. I got the bug around the first of the year, but had to wait a couple of months for my current contract with Verizon to expire. This gave me some time to research which smart phone to go with. I did a ton of reading on smart phones including listening to a few podcasts, one of the best being, Mobile Computing Authority.
I had my eye on Apple’s iPhone. It is a nice piece of hardware, but in the end I decided to go with a Blackberry Curve, as shown in the picture. The iPhone has the potential to become a significant business class smart phone, but presently it does not offer what the Blackberry does.
The biggest drawback for the iPhone is the inability to load native applications on the phone. If you want to use the phone for an application that is not built-in by Apple, you are forced to use a web based application. With this approach, you are “dead in the water” then you loose an Internet connection such as on a plane flight or inside many commercial buildings.
While the iPhone is going for $500, I picked up my Blackberry Curve from AT&T for $200 with a $100 rebate. The data package is $30 a month, which is in addition to the standard phone minutes. I did need to change carriers from Verizon (which uses the CDMA technology) to AT&T (which uses GSM technology). You will typically find better phone choices available at GSM carriers since GSM is the dominant platform globally. Phone manufacturers know a GSM phone can be sold to a larger market.
I will likely do more posts about my Blackberry experience but Let me list out the key features.
- It has all the basic functions as a standard PDA which is typically referred to as personal information management (PIM) software. It comes with nice syncing software which allows me to synchronize my contact list and calendar events from a copy of Outlook on my desktop computer.
- I use Google’s Gmail which is web based and Google has a nice application I installed that allows me to easily check and write email directly from the Blackberry in real time.
- I also don’t use the built-in task list but use an online application. I am trying to implement the Getting Things Done (GTD) system and the standard task list just doesn’t give me enough. I am currently trying Nozbe and Remember the Milk. I will choose between one of these soon. Both offer a web interface and a mobile phone interface.
- It has a built-in 2 Mega pixel camera with flash.
- It has built-in GPS
- It has media player and the syncing software makes it easy to transfer audio and video from a computer to the Blackberry.
- There is a large amount of software applications that can be installed on the phone to add functionality.
I am having fun implementing this new piece of technology and I could see myself becoming a “Crackberry”.
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