These days, a mobile phone is something that almost everybody finds useful and carries around. Of course, what would be even more useful (at least for the ubergeeks amongst us) would be a PDA phone or a Smartphone which combined the capabilities of a PDA and a mobile phone in one. I currently use a Sony Ericsson P800 and am pretty happy with it but recently decided to look around for a replacement phone and this is the story of that journey of discovery :p
First let me start off with a little bit of history. I started using PDAs way back when the HP had their Handheld PC - the one which had a flip screen and a tiny little keyboard where you could type stuff on. I graduated from that to a Compaq iPaq and then when I got the chance to combine my PDA and mobile devices into one in the form of the P800, I jumped at it. With a largish display at 40 x 60 mm which is touch sensitive, you can simply tap on it with the included stylus to select menu options or to carry out certain tasks like reading messages or answering an incoming call. At around 160g, it s not too heavy either. Of course, when you have phones at around half that weight, you might think twice about the weight, but what you have to understand is that the phone comes with a built-in digital camera and also has a slot for a memory stick which allows you to increase the storage capacity of the phone.
But enough of the dry as dust details I hear you say, what can the phone actually do that makes it so special? Well apart from the fact that it allows you to take pictures, store them and even edit them on your phone itself, it also has full Internet connectivity. It allows you to browse the web in glorious HTML images and all unlike the fairly limited WAP browsers that most Internet capable phones still provide. This means that you don t have to be limited to just sites that have a WAP capable page, you can browse any site on the Internet using the P800. In addition to that, the P800 is fully message enabled whether it is e-mail, SMS or MMS, the P800 can handle all of it (as long as you have a GPRS connection that is at least for e-mail and MMS).
Not only that, since you can install new applications on to the phone, you can actually extend the capabilities of the phone. You can install an instant messaging tool that works with ICQ, AIM, MSN Messenger or Yahoo Messenger and be in contact with all your friends right from the phone. I found this to be actually cheaper than being connected via dial-up through my land line since you only pay for the data that is transferred on the cellular connection when you use GPRS. You can also get applications for the P800 that do a variety of tasks from keeping track of your book or DVD collection to keeping track of your financial transaction to acting as a remote control for your TV to acting as a mini-GPRS unit based on which cell in the cellular network you are in, the P800 has applications to do it all!
But of course, this is all old hat! The P800 was great in its day and age but that was two years ago and in the world of today, two years is a long time. So what phone would I go for today if I wanted a successor to the P800? Initially, my bets were on the Sony Ericsson P990i as my next phone since it had all the features that I wanted. It had a more vibrant display than the P800, had 3G support, a better camera, a built-in keyboard and connectivity up the wazoo with even WLAN support added in. However, I have been increasingly aware of the fact that Symbian OS phones don t seem to have all the apps that I d like to see being available for them. Besides, developing for a Symbian OS phone isn t as easy as it would be developing for, say a Pocket PC phone. At least, that s how it has looked from where I stand.
Then, I came across the HP iPaq hw6500, which is both a handheld PC and a mobile phone! Now this device has all the capabilities that I can think of using (except for Wi-Fi and 3G) and it uses a variant of the Windows CE OS which makes development fairly easy! So, for instance, if I wanted a way to transfer my DVD database over to my phone so that I can carry it around on shopping trips, I probably will be able to do so much more easily on this device than I would on a Symbian OS based phone since I would be able to code the functionality in myself. So, I m looking very hard at the HP iPaq hw6500 as an option but the lack of Wi-Fi access bothers me. I ve looked at a couple of other similar handheld PC/phone combo devices but some of them lack a keyboard and others have those bulky (and annoying) antennas sticking out of them. So I guess I must continue to look if I want to find the ultimate phone device or go with the HP iPaq hw6500 :p
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