Obsessing Over Cell Phones

Christopher Smith — Sun, 08 Jul 2007 23:16:00 -0700

So, for several months now, I’ve been dragging around a Sprint PPC-6700 with a cracked LCD screen. This turns out to be a real pain with touch screens, because it breaks the touch circuitry. I’ve been putting off doing something about it for a variety of reasons, but particularly given the availability of the Neo 1973, I feel the time has come to make a decision.

Despite two posts on it, I’m really not interested in getting an iPhone. Beyond that, I’m quite confused about what I want to do. My choices would appear as follows:

Just get a functional PPC-6700. I actually have insurance on the phone, so this is a cheap, $50 option that gets me back to where I was.

Upgrade to the Mogul aka, the PPC-6800. I can get a partial discount on the phone if I commit to another two years with Sprint (which I’m pretty much committed to anyway due to having recently added yet another member of the family on to our plan). This means it’d cost me slightly less than $500, which will require some doing to justify.

Give up on having my cell phone be a full fledged mobile PC, and instead going with some of Sprint’s other phones. Possibly something with basic web browsing capabilities, but the focus would be on phone capabilities.

Finally, there is the Neo 1973 lingering in the background. Honestly, if it wasn’t the first real Linux phone (i.e. where you can really access Linux and mess with it), I wouldn’t give it the time of day. However, it is such a beast and better still it has a nice VGA touch screen, and that makes it incredibly interesting.

Complicating this whole mess is the insane situation with cell phones that is the US market place. You can basically choose between four carriers, all of which basically suck. We ended up on Sprint mostly through the following function: Verizon ticked us off, Cingular had given us trouble before and had been particularly obnoxious to my mother in law who’d been an AT&T customer before the merger, and T-Mobile had horrid reception at my office. This lead us to Sprint (who actually have caused us headaches before too, but we hadn’t dealt with them for the longest so…. ;-).

Throw in to that the joy that is cell phone contracts (we’re effectively locked in to Sprint for two more years). The iPhone may not be cool enough to make me think about breaking contracts or paying for two cell phone services at once, but the Neo 1973 is. Now, the current rev lacks WiFi support, and in general, do you really want the 1.0 version of such experimental hardware? (Answer: YES! I’m a geek.)

Complicating this has been my experiences so far with the 6700. In true Windows fashion, it’s been somewhat unstable. In particular, it seems to react somewhat poorly to receiving a call while I have the phone locked… which is most of the time I receive a call. It also is a little underpowered, it is clear to me that the extra processing power and RAM in the Mogul, while seemingly minor, would actually make a huge difference with end user experience. I’ve actually not installed much software on the phone, but this is mostly because I’ve had bad experiences with most of the installs I have done. I’ve had problems with running out of memory, not having the right runtime installed, problems getting some software to install on the mini-SD card, etc. The browser on it has been handy on more than a few occasions, although it is hard to justify the $15/month service charge for the data service (unless you own Sprint stock ;-). One problem is that as web sites get more and more AJAX-y, they work more and more poorly with the crippled version of IE embedded in it (and yes, I have tried installing a Gecko based browser, with very unfortunate consequences). A number of sites are frustrating close to working completely, like Reddit, which works well enough except the login button, which is the key to unlocking the site’s potential (similar problems with the MTA website). I’ve used the e-mail support a fair bit, but it’s never really worked with work e-mail, and I only get the top 100 e-mails in each folder, which proves to be severely limiting for someone who abuses IMAP as much as I do. More than anything else, I’ve found QVGA to be an extraordinarily limiting resolution for working with anything other than “designed for QVGA” content.

At this point, I am leaning to canceling the data service, going with one of Sprint’s Sanyo phones (they seem to have the best reception and voice quality), and then debating with myself whether I’d really actually use a Neo 1973, and maybe waiting for early adopter reports to filter in. On the other hand, I’d like to *be* one of those early adopters! ;-)

As much as I like the Neo 1973’s openness, and as much as I sometimes question the ROI of my data services, I probably would have gone with the Mogul except for its shortcomings in one particular area: screen resolution. I have to hand it to Apple for not allowing themselves to be confined to a QVGA world. It’s a sad world to be in, and yet it is impossible to get a Windows Mobile phone in the US with >QVGA resolution. Outside the US there are a number of models to choose from, but the insanity of the way the cellphone market works in the US means that we get the latest and greatest last. Indeed, most of what makes the iPhone such a marvelous phone is that it is available in the US first. I imagine when it shows up in some other countries, a lot of people will shrug their shoulds and say, “So what?”. Given what I know is possible with mobile handsets today, I find it incredibly hard to spend >$400 on a cell phone and end up with a display whose resolution is the same as what was available two years ago, and hasn’t been seen on the desktop in like twenty years. Heck, I’d rather have a power-efficient but high resolution grayscale screen than the low-res color crud we have right now. While perfectly fine for scrolling through a list of menu options, it is not really suitable for reading web content that inevitably has 200+ pixels set aside on the left just for navigation links (one could blame the net for this, and I do, but phones that address this are already available, I just want them on my provider’s network).

So, I’m sure if anyone actually reads all this, they’ll have suggestions. Please fire away. I’m all ears.

"Obsessing Over Cell Phones" by Christopher Smith

Sun, 28 Oct 2007 11:16:07 -0700

The Neo 1973 is a GSM phone and Sprint has a CDMA network, so the Neo would never work on Sprint’s network. The only networks you could hope it would work on would be T-mobile and AT&T. The good news is GSM networks use SIM chips, so it is possible (far from certain) you could just stick a SIM in it from another phone and it would work.

"Obsessing Over Cell Phones" by Ryan

Sat, 27 Oct 2007 20:36:26 -0700

Is it even possible to obtain a Neo 1973 from Sprint? Or would I have to order one from their site and then hope Sprint will activate it for me?

"Obsessing Over Cell Phones" by http://jjinux.blogspot.com

Sat, 11 Aug 2007 00:39:11 -0700

I’m feelin’ for ya. I’m in pretty much the exact same situation.

"Obsessing Over Cell Phones" by Christopher Smith

Sat, 04 Aug 2007 00:06:37 -0700

Yeah, I heard about that. I also heard that they aren’t quite sure if the local GSM providers have figured out a way to block them as well. All in all, the Neo1973 is sounding more and more depressing. I hope these things get worked out quickly.

"Obsessing Over Cell Phones" by Kevin

Sat, 28 Jul 2007 10:53:46 -0700

So, one of the saddest things I learned this week is that they haven’t quite implemented the “making phone calls” feature yet on the Neo1973.

"Obsessing Over Cell Phones" by quixote

Mon, 09 Jul 2007 20:15:44 -0700

I followed the link from your socalwug post on the mailing list. Man, do I know what you mean. Also had to laugh about choosing a provider. I’m getting out from under Verizon soon, so I’ve been looking around. One of the worst companies I’ve ever dealt with. Imagine my shock when I see that their customer “service” is considered among the best. Jeeee-sus.

And I’m not a geek, but I still want one of those Neos NOW. I’ll have to wait till folks like you have at them. So do your duty! Get out there and make the thing good for the likes of me!

Xblog: Obsessing Over Cell Phones

Obsessing Over Cell Phones

"Obsessing Over Cell Phones" by Christopher Smith

"Obsessing Over Cell Phones" by Ryan

"Obsessing Over Cell Phones" by http://jjinux.blogspot.com

"Obsessing Over Cell Phones" by Christopher Smith

"Obsessing Over Cell Phones" by Kevin

"Obsessing Over Cell Phones" by quixote