Advice on a cell phone, part deux

In My Humble Opinion
1

I started a thread before, but I’ve got new questions, (and a few old ones), and I’d like to start a new clean thread.

I’m currently going back and forth trying to find the best price for our business, we’re bouncing back and forth between Verizon and AT&T. From the looks of it, they’re about even. Now I’m looking at phones. With Verizon I’m looking at the VX6800 vs the SCH i760 and with AT&T I’m looking at the Tilt (same as VX6800) vs the iPhone.

Here’s my questions.
First is wi-fi. The guy at the AT&T store was surpised that I dismissed a phone that didn’t have wi-fi without even thinking about it. Does that sound reasonable? I spent a lot of time going back and forth between the vx6800 and the i760 and I decided I didn’t want the i760 since it doesn’t have wi-fi. The phone he was pointing out (not sure which one it was) had 3G, he claimed it was pretty fast. Is 3G really that fast? Can I safely assume, that wi-fi (at home I have a wi-fi network connected to a cable modem) is still going to be a hell of a lot faster then 3G or Edge or Evdo (or whatever Verizon is using)? Also, the iphone has wi-fi, but after that it still connects to the Edge network. How are the speeds on Edge? Or rather how fast is the internet on the iPhone.

Next is what I’d like to use it for. I keep hearing how many less features the iPhone has then anything else. I’m looking for a phone that can check email (I really don’t care if it has push email or not), has a calander, a place to take/make notes and does a good job surfing the internet, how do these phones compare in respect to that.

One more thing. In my last thread someone mentiond that iPhone SDK should be coming out next month. I just took a look at the apple site, and since I’ve never looked their site before, I don’t know for sure, but it looks to me like it’s out. There are quite a few apps on the iphone page. Am I correct in thinking that based on what I see there, all the stuff that people say is missing from the iPhone should start showing up there?

If you can’t tell, I’m trying to convince myself to get an iPhone. But I keep hearing all the bad stuff about it. My main point I’m using to convince myself is that since I’ve never had a smart phone before, no matter how many things it’s missing, it’ll still be a net gain. For example, I don’t beleive it can create or edit Office files, OTOH, I’ve really never felt a need to do that on my phone before. Oooh, something that does bother me though. I recently read that it can’t receive picture messages. I read that if someone sends you a picture message, it emails you a link to the picture which you then have to write down and type into the browser since the link isn’t clickable (odd) and there’s no cut and paste.

So, in conclusion, I think the phones it really comes down to are the VS6800 (AT&T Tilt) and the iPhone, I think. What are everyone’s thoughts on those phones. I’m really confused here. I plan to stop in at an Apple Store today and see if I can play with one. Frankly I’m hoping one of two things happens. I’m hoping either I absolutley HATE HATE HATE the form factor OR I’m hoping that after some more digging around I find a way to set up our business phone plan such that Verizon comes out way a head. If one of these two things happens, I won’t have to make the decesion, but if I play with the iPhone and love it I’ll have a dilemma. So please people, help me decide.
I’ll be back later with more questions as I think of them, and to answer any questions you need answered to clarify anything.

2

The Edge service is slower than wi-fi, but not so slow that it’s unusable. Figure a few extra seconds to load a web page. I was showing off my iPhone at a friend’s cabin last week where there was no wi-fi, and they spent a good half hour playing with the satellite photos from the Google Maps app, and nobody complained about the speed. I figure that’s a pretty good test, since that’s a lot of data coming down.

I don’t know about any of the other phones, but the iPhone does all of that just fine.

The apps on the iPhone page are web-based apps designed for the iPhone. Meaning: to get to them, you open the browser on the iPhone and navigate to those apps like any other web page.

The SDK will allow people to create apps that “live” on the iPhone itself, like the email and notepad apps that come with the iPhone. Does that make sense?

No, it can’t create or edit Office files. I’m like you, though - I can’t imagine wanting to do that on a phone. The screen is just too small.

As far as picture messages, I’ve never had any trouble with them. I was just looking at some photos a friend sent me the other day. The only thing that’s a little goofy is that there’s no way to copy the photo out of the message and into the iPhone’s photo area, so if you want to keep them there, you need to upload them to a computer, then download them back to the photo area.

If you just want to look at the photos in your email, it does that fine.

If you want to try out an iPhone, the return policy is pretty good. If I recall correctly, you can try it out for 14 days and get a full refund, and the AT&T service can be canceled within a month with no cancellation fee.

3

posting from iPhone at apple store.

4

I was impressed at how fast the pages loaded on the iPhone, then after I left I did a :smack: as I realized it was on wi-fi, if I had thought about it, I would have turned wi-fi off and tried it that way.

5

I just tried loading a few pages with Wi-Fi and with the Wi-Fi turned off. I just clicked links in my favorites and timed it from the time I clicked a link to the time the page was fully loaded.

The first number is wi-fi, the second is the Edge network.

www.nytimes.com: 20 secs/46 secs
boards.straightdope.com/sdmb: 7 secs/17 secs
Wunderground.com (some big long mobile URL that I’m not going to type out): 5 secs/11 secs

So the Edge stuff is roughly half as fast as my wi-fi.

In practice, that’s not too bad. Like I said, I’ve noticed some slowdowns when not using wi-fi but it’s by no means so slow that I don’t want to use it. To tell the truth, I was a little surprised at the numbers; I would have guessed the Edge was maybe 25% slower than my wi-fi.

6

Sigh, now I’m really confused. Turns out that both AT&T and Verizon have identical plans, so that’s not a deciding issue. I didn’t hate playing with the iPhone, so that didn’t tip the scales. So at the moment, I’m REALLY confused. And now there’s another one in the mix. Pantaech Duo. Thought that’s got a lot of moving parts, for a phone. So can anyone tell me about surfing the internet on a non iPhone, non blackberry, just a ‘regular’ smart phone. Does the expierence suck? I really need something to help tilt the scales one way or the other.

7

The iPhone does 20 things well, the Windows Mobile phones do a BUNCH of things crappy (and I’ve had a lot of phones over the years.

The iPhone isn’t perfect, by any means, it’s just the best phone I’ve had. (HTC 8125, HTC 2125, Nokia 6822, Razr, Moto v600, Some LG, Nokia 8260…crap, that’s not even all of them)

8

Sounds to me like another vote for the iPhone.
Question, is it possible to install iTunes without installing Quicktime?

9

I’ve only had my iPhone for two weeks, so you might want to take my opinions with a grain of salt.

The iPhone is the most incredibly awesome thing in the history of the universe.

They didn’t jam a web browser into a phone along with some music playing abilities. They created a Total User Experience, where everything is (as is typical for Apple) completely integrated. The commercial about the calamari? It works just like that. Find a place in Google Maps, tap, tap, you’re on the phone with them. Surf the web, find an address – tap, tap, you’re seeing it on Google Maps. Or tap on the phone number (on the web page, Google map pop-up window or your contacts list) and you’re talking to them. Visual voicemail – how did they not come up with this before? It’s obviously the right way to do it; why would anyone do it otherwise? Taking photos and assigning them to my phone book contacts so their pictures show up (along with individual ring-tones) when they call me? Trivial. (I’m fairly sure a lot of phones do this nowadays, but I’m still impressed).

As is also typical of Apple, they got it right in a big-picture sort of way, but they also focused on a million little details that just make it so … right. You’re sliding your finger across the screen to flip through your photos, and the images bounce slightly against the side of the screen and then settle down. (You slide pretty much anything anywhere, and even it it’s not supposed to move, it’ll humor you by squinching up slightly before settling back into its position).

And the oft-maligned EDGE? Fast enough for me. I came from a four-year hate/hate relationship with a crappy, buggy, bulky phone that could only do one thing (make phone calls), and it couldn’t even do that very well. So the iPhone is a revelation to me. Can I check my e-mail (on multiple accounts) while stuck in traffic? Yes! Can I log onto CheapMF.com while at a store to see if they’re trying to sell me something at a competitive price? Why, yes I can. Can I use it one-handed? Surprisingly, yes.

The big deal for me is durability. PCWorld dropped an iPhone into a bag full of keys and shook it for some 30 minutes. No scratches. Then they took a hangar wire and started scraping along the top. Well, I closed the window before I saw the result. But at ArsTechnica.com, they dropped it numerous times, threw it skidding along the sidewalk (glass down), and it continued to work until they dropped it out of a third story window, after which it could only be used to receive phone calls, as the touch screen finally died. I can’t abide a “useful gadget” that needs to be treated with kid gloves, so I haven’t gotten a screen protector or any case, and I’ve been stuffing it in my pants pockets (front and back), sometimes with keys and change, tossing it in the glove compartment of my car and tossing it onto my sofa. Because I like to see my gadgets bounce. I’ve generally mistreated it as much as I mistreat my Palm, and it continues to come through unscathed.

Some nits: I don’t miss GPS, but others do. I have a GPS, and as wonderful as it is, it was less useful to me than Google Maps on the iPhone last weekend when I got lost looking for the Buena Park Mall. I’d like a removeable SD card and a removeable battery, but those weren’t dealbreakers for me. The iPhone Bluetooth supports telephone headsets, but not stereo headphones (they don’t currently support AVRCP and A2DP, but those are just a firmware update away). My biggest complaint – lack of copy/paste, is rumored to be fixed with the next firmware update.

You should probably know, however, that I’m probably a customer perfectly suited to the iPhone – I wanted Internet Everywhere with some phone on the side. I got Internet Everywhere, with a lot more integrated capabilities than I’d expected, and a phone that sounds (to my much-abused ears) much better than the phone I had been using. And it’s small enough to jam in my pockets, which makes it useful.

Oh, yeah. You can’t edit MS Office documents or PDFs, but you can e-mail them to yourself (word, excel, powerpoint and PDF) so you can view them anywhere. I have the ability to edit MS office docs on my Palm and basically never use it (except for a simple mortgage spreadsheet).

Coming from a Palm background, I still eagerly await a calendar program as powerful as DateBk5, and I want a flat file database (like JFile). I’m taking it on faith that with the “public release” of the SDK next month, that these will be forthcoming. I also have a program on my Palm that tells me the elevation of the sun that I use to tell me when I can exercise. (I only go bicycling or walking when the sun is below 25 degrees elevation – don’t ask). I haven’t found the right site yet, but I’m sure I can find one on the net to use with my iPhone.

In any case, I’m completely dispassionate about the whole issue and you should choose whatever phone you think meets your needs.

10

Nope, quicktime handles all the video/transcoding lifting for iTunes. It can be set up to stay out of your way, but it’s become a well behaved citizen…other than ‘messing things up’, is there a reason you don’t want quicktime?

11

You can just drag playable files (mp3, wav, m4a (unencrypted aac) and aif) into iTunes and it’ll just add them to your library unchanged. Unfortunately, there’s no support for ogg vorbis files or wma; those would need to be transcoded to another format; then just drag the mp3s or aacs into the iTunes window.

Is it just a fear of Quicktime making itself the default for opening mov, mpg, avi and flv files? That should be able to be disabled during the Quicktime installation process. If its an issue with the way iTunes organizes your music (into Artist/Album subfolders, that can be disabled in iTunes.

12

I never liked the way Quicktimes took over my computer. Became the default for everything, always wanted to connect to the internet to check for updates, always wants to be running in the tray etc… In fact, when my wife got her iPod, I refused to let her install iTunes on my computer. We put it on an old crappy computer and she dealt with that to put songs on the iPod, but she still charges it from mine.