{"id":270,"date":"2008-06-17T14:25:58","date_gmt":"2008-06-17T21:25:58","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/gregbaker.ca\/blog\/?p=270"},"modified":"2008-06-17T14:25:58","modified_gmt":"2008-06-17T21:25:58","slug":"phone-help-wanted","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/gregbaker.ca\/blog\/2008\/06\/17\/phone-help-wanted\/","title":{"rendered":"Phone Help Wanted"},"content":{"rendered":"

Yay! Kat’s back!<\/p>\n

But that’s not really what I want to write about. Since Kat’s back in Vancouver, she needs to get a Canadian cell phone. My RAZR is starting to slowly degrade, so I’m thinking about replacing it before it falls apart totally. So, we’re both in the market for phones.<\/p>\n

There are two issues here: the phone and the service plan. As much as the mobile industry would like to confound those two decisions, I’m going to treat them separately.<\/p>\n

I would appreciate any thoughts people have on how to satisfy these requirements…<\/p>\n

Phone<\/h3>\n

For the phone, our needs are relatively modest. It should be able to… (in approximate priority order)<\/p>\n

    \n
  1. make calls.<\/li>\n
  2. send\/receive text messages with a decent interface.<\/li>\n
  3. be small and easily back-pocketable.<\/li>\n
  4. sync its addressbook and calendar with a computer with open\/free\/common technologies. For me, that means Google Calendar (or an iCalendar file) and Linux. For Kat, it’s Apple iCal and a Mac. This is a dealbreaker for me, possibly not for Kat.<\/li>\n
  5. send\/receive emails in some suitably rudimentary way.<\/li>\n
  6. take pictures, I suppose.<\/li>\n
  7. maybe access the web, but I don’t hold out a lot of hope for mobile browsers not sucking.<\/li>\n
  8. things that might be nice, but I don’t really care: speaker phone, GPS, wi-fi.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

    I have been playing with a phone finder<\/a>, but don’t have much to report.<\/p>\n

    Motorola phones are totally out for me: the RAZR was a nice enough phone, but the software sucks hard. The browser is unusable (e.g. no way that I can find to enter a URL: I had to email a link to Google to myself so I could get there), the calendar won’t sync with anything as far as I can tell, and it generally won’t talk to anything computer-wise.<\/p>\n

    The worst example of its usability are the outside buttons. On the left of the phone, there is a rocker switch, and a single pushbutton (which you can see in this picture<\/a>). The rocker switch is used to toggle ring setting\/do nothing modes, and the pushbutton is used to scroll through ring settings. Let me say that again: the up\/down buttons are used to toggle, and the toggle button is used to scroll. Dead to me.<\/p>\n

    Also note that the iPhone is totally out for me: the cryptographic signing of the database to eliminate any software other than iTunes is totally unacceptable and I won’t have anything to do with it, or any other Apple products as long as it’s there.<\/p>\n

    Plan<\/h3>\n

    We are fairly light users and have a Vonage line at home, so these aren’t main phones. Things I would like (and I think Kat is fairly similar):<\/p>\n