A Dork's Digital Dilema
Follow-up to Web 'n' Walk from nathanielho.com :: blog
(Phonewang - if you don't speak in 1's and 0's, look away now)
My Sony Ericsson K800i has been serving me very well for over a year. Its has a decent AF 3.2MP camera with xenon flash which gives decent pictures. I can stream BBC News over the net, or download podcasts. I can encode episodes of TV into 3GP format to play on it when I'm bored on the train. With the excellent Web 'n' Walk internet tariff I can take a picture that's 800kB large, right click, send via email and its off very quickly. It checks my emails all the time, updates my RSS feeds and with 4GB of storage it has enough for music.
I've made myself think for quite a while that I want the Sony Ericsson K850i (the successor to the K810/K800). It looks awesome (yet to see it in real life though), has more megapixels (3.2MP was enough to print photos on 6x4 but 5MP should be better). It has HSDPA which means the net will be 5 times faster than normal UMTS, but without connecting it to a computer, I won't notice much difference. The main problem is that its not a smartphone - I guess its not designed to be one: Just an ordinary phone that could blow the doors off everything else and yet still work with MyPhoneExplorer. But I want a phone to do a bit more. I want to use messenger, Skype, SIP (the latter two limited by my data tariff - so WiFi or 3-mobile would be needed).
The Sony Ericsson selection is currently about compromises, you can only have one or the other: Do I want WiFi or HSDPA? The Nokia N95 probably sorts out all these problems by having both and an operating system which people write a lot of apps for. So I could get Fring to use messenger, skype, SIP etc. But if I've gone this far (in specs and price), I could keep the K800i and get a laptop instead (which would do a whole lot more!), and a laptop has probably got the same battery life as a N95!
Maybe the real solution is the £49.99 3-Skypephone on PAYG, unlimited skype-to-skype calls and chats, plus MSN messenger for £10/month. But we all know how much I like carrying twophones and how well I got on with 3-Mobile in the past...
Nathaniel Ho
31 Oct 2007 12:58
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Tags: Mobiles Technology
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Comments (2)
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Chris Payne
Don’t even think about getting an N95. You shall be officially ousted if you become a full Nokia wench :P
07 Nov 2007, 14:15
Phones Limited
The new Skypephone is a good alternative but seems to have been lost in the hype surrounding the impending maunch of the Apple iPhone on Nov 9th.
Skype to skype calls without any set-up is great and the handset automatically configures and logs on every time it is switched on.
Still, the K850i is an amazing handset, compared to the other 5.0 megapixel offerings of the LG Viewty, Nokia N95 and Samsung G600 (which I have) I think the K850i wins hands-down.
09 Nov 2007, 12:09
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