buying a new PDA. What direction to go?

[Mama_Zappa]

@Stink Fish Pot

Thanks.. I did misunderstand, and didn’t read iPod Touch. I saw iPad. My mistake.

and your last paragraph sums up exactly what I’d like to do in a perfect world. Use an android like a PDA without necessarily activating it for now. That’s why I originally was looking into iPhones that were being sold for 50 bucks. That’s a hell of a lot cheaper than anything else out there with that kind of functionality.

I don’t understand ‘jailbreaking’ at all, but from what I read, it will permit you to use another carrier besides AT&T. If that’s true, perhaps it will permit me to use no carrier and just use it as a PDA?

As I understand it, the 50 dollar iPhone is sold that way only if you purchase a 2 year contract, so it winds up being more expensive.

I too am shaky on what jailbreaking does for an iPhone. I don’t think that would be needed, if for example you use a secondhand one and simply never activate it. Similarly with an Android-based unit. Buying a new one would come with the whole 2-year-contract thing with most carriers. I don’t know if Virgin Mobile works that way with smartphones, or if you can do prepaid / no contract with those. It would be worth checking.

That said - if all you truly want is a PDA for now, a used iPhone or Android bought off of eBay should do the deed - there are some available for 100-200 dollars. You might want to look for one that matches your carrier in case you ever DO want to activate it as a phone. 4th generation iPod Touches are going for 209-365 at Amazon depending on the memory. We paid something like 360 for ours (3rd generation 64 gig models). You should be able to get a refurbished 3rd generation (no camera) for even less.

I was going to say that if you currently use iTunes / iPod, an iPod Touch or iPhone seems like the obvious choice because then you can put your music on it as well… but a few months back, a fellow Doper told me about a tool called DoubleTwist which can work like iTunes for the Android(even imports your iTunes music, or maybe it runs off the iTunes files and just sets up its own library info).

[Omniscient]

@Stink Fish Pot

I don’t understand ‘jailbreaking’ at all, but from what I read, it will permit you to use another carrier besides AT&T. If that’s true, perhaps it will permit me to use no carrier and just use it as a PDA?

No, and sorta.

Jailbreaking simply unlocks the software restrictions manufacturers put on the phone. This allows 2 things, first if it’s a GSM phone it can be swapped to other GSM networks by replacing the SIM card. This however is only half the story, AT&T phones have 2 different transmitters in them in the US, one for the slow Edge network and one for fast 3G networks. The slow Edge network is compatible with T-Mobile and you can get a T-Mobile SIM card and pop it into the phone. The catch however is that you are now limited to the Edge network, T-Mobile’s 3G/4G network requires a different transmitter that AT&T phones do not have. Personally I think it’s silly to own a smartphone and be stuck on Edge while paying for a data plan, I did it for over a year and frankly it wasn’t worth the $20 a month I saved. The second think jailbreaking does it it allows you install unapproved software and modify existing software limitations. This is what most people jalibreak for, it doesn’t really apply to you since none of the tasks you want to do are outside the realm of approved apps.

You’ll be able to use ANY smart phone, unlocked, jailbroken or neither, on WiFi as a PDA/music player. Those features are in no way tied to the cellular carriers. An iPhone might require a SIM to activate it, and there are work arounds, but you can throw it away as soon as you have it activated and running.

Why are you opposed to just upgrading you existing Virgin Mobile phone to a new Android device? Save yourself the grief of carrying 2 phones. I’m pretty sure you wouldn’t even need to modify your plan so long as you disabled the data option on the phone. What’s the upside to carrying a second phone?

Be warned, Android phones can be a bit troublesome for the less technically savvy. They are far more flexible than iPhones and Windows Phones, but with that flexibility comes instability and fragmentation. You may find yourself frustrated by the level of customization that an Android phone can require to get it to work how you want. iPhone and Windows Phone take the other tactic and hold your hand to the point that the restrictiveness is frustrating. After using all three, I’ve found that Android was my least favorite and my far the least functional at integrating with my PC and existing data.

[crypto]

@Omniscient

Why are you opposed to just upgrading you existing Virgin Mobile phone to a new Android device? Save yourself the grief of carrying 2 phones. I’m pretty sure you wouldn’t even need to modify your plan so long as you disabled the data option on the phone. What’s the upside to carrying a second phone?

I’m not opposed to this suggestion at all, and will be looking into it as well. I don’t want to carry two phones, that’s for sure. Maybe this is the way to go. Ideally, I’d be able to have all of this functionality in one unit.

And at the end of the day, the functionality I want/need is minimal.

1. Must have a good contact list
2. must have a good calendar
3. email
4. phone/voicemail
5. some office-type products to read spreadsheets, etc.
   That’s about it. I don’t need much in the way of games, etc.

[Omniscient]

What do you use for you primary email and spreadsheet programs?

If you use Outlook, Excel and Word I think the Windows Phone has a huge advantage over Android and iPhone. Those other devices can handle those programs, but the implementation isn’t nearly as seamless and it takes tinkering.

If you use Google Docs and GMail then Android is probably the way to go. Though the iPhone is actually pretty Google friendly too.

Since many of these devices are pretty interchangeable and many of those tools have apps that work on all the popular platforms (to varying degrees of success) it’s often music that can be the deal breaker. For some people it’s all about iTunes. If you are a iTunes user already and like it and are chained to it by a bunch of content it’s tough to argue against the iPhone. Some people, like me, hate iTunes with the heat of a thousand suns and would never use iTunes even if I were using a iPhone and are therefore pretty eager to use something else. For us the Window Phone is pretty tough to top. The Android devices are really, really crappy music players compared to the others. Supposedly Google is working to improve that with the next major release, but that’s always the rumor. If music isn’t something you’d ever use then Android is a pretty reasonable choice and it’s app store is probably going to grow faster and always be more versatile than iOS.

Like I said, I think that the phone that best replicates the PDA experience today is the Windows Phones. It’s well behind the others in terms of apps and it’s a newer operating system so for tinkerers it’s the worst choice. If you want something that just works out of the box with the least hassle, then it’s either iOS or Windows Phone depending on which ecosystem you are already invested in (iTunes, Zune, Hotmail, MS Office etc.). If you are a Googlephile and really want a swiss army knife of a device that doesn’t do music worth a damn and isn’t likely to get timely updates then Android is for you.

It hasn’t really been mentioned yet, but how important is a keyboard? PDA users are pretty used to not having keyboards in general, but the days of the stylus are gone. Do you think that a transition to a touchscreen will be a problem? If you think a keyboard is a priority then that rules out Apple devices and cuts Windows device options down to a few.

I should note that if all you REALLY want to do is have a good phone, a good email device, a good calendar and a good contact list a Blackberry is probably the winner. Blackberry’s mop the floor with all three of the other OSes when it comes to being a phone/email device. It’s really not a competition. Blackberries are much more stable, durable and have the best battery life too.

Blackberries struggle a little with spreadsheets and office stuff, but that might be improving since they’ve updated the OS and gone to bigger screens. Blackberries are useless for music and games, even worse than Android as far as music goes and they have very few apps and aren’t very customizable. The keyboards on Blackberries are phenomenal. However, Blackberries don’t sync in the cloud nearly as nicely as the other products do and are much more self contained than the other devices. iPhone and Windows Phone do a pretty good job of marrying with your desktop and allowing you to take work and life with you from place to place. Android is trying to live in the cloud and doesn’t like playing with your computer, the Blackberry likes to live mostly on it’s own.

Lots to think about.

The best PDA replacements are Blackberry and Windows Phone. Each has serious pros and cons. The iPhone is much more of a media device and a toy, but it’s the most mature and doesn’t really fall flat in any one area but it doesn’t really excel at what PDAs do either. Android might have the most potential functionality but it has the most potential headaches too.

[shijinn]

@Stink Fish Pot

… part of my problem is that I have too much crap that has versions of everything. A phone, a PDA, a laptop, a desktop computer. Why not eliminate one of these things? … The ipad I don’t view as an option, because it’s not as portable as a cell phone or a palm pilot. …

depending on what you do on your laptop or even your desktop, have you considered replacing them with an ipad instead? unless you have already handled one, you really should give it a try at a store.

the form factor really is just nice, and is as large as it should be without being unwieldy. everything else is just so crampy on phones (especially spreadsheets!) . just throwing it out there as the ipad has replaced all four items for me personally - my smartphone now functions as a dumb one and my desktop now sulks in the corner over how much time i spend on the ipad instead, even at home.