I’m thinking of getting my wife one of those Palm Pilots with a cell phone built in, because I think it will help her in her work. She’s a nurse for a doctor’s office, and her primary responsibility is taking phone calls for the doctor and either handling them herself or speaking to the doctor about them, so she’s always writing down notes regarding the calls, often needing to flag things for later action, etc. Sounds to me like a Palm Pilot or other PDA would be very well suited for such use.
So, some questions for you Dopers:
Do these units have a special name? I’d love to Google for good prices, product reviews, etc. But I don’t want to wade through a bunch of ordinary cell phone reviews or or ordinary PDA reviews to try and cherry-pick the ones that are combo units.
Any brands/models you’d particularly recommend?
How do the cell phone portions of these things work, do you need to hold the unit to your ear and mouth like a normal phone, or can you speak into it from a distance , leaving you able to write on the surface? Is it possible to plug a headset into the unit, so she’d be able to speak and write on the PDA portion at the same time?
If you really want a palm pilot phone than the one that is most likely the best is the Treo 650 (I used teh Treo 600 which was okay but rebooted a lot especially during phone calls)
Kyocera made one that also was pretty good, but it had a lot of little “power” issues, and I don’t believe is availab.e
Additionally blackberry has now made one, which is a pretty good combo email / phone, but really lacks additional applications, especially ones for the medical industry.
In terms of how they work, it is pretty typical to just hold them up to your ear like a normal phone, although I tend to prefer the hands free. Additionall I hear the treo 650 has blue tooth, so you could most likely get a blue tooth hands free head set. The keyboard and the screen both can be used for dialing, and it is pretty cool to use applications like vindigo to pull up a number for a place to eat, and then dial it right there.
Down sides, expensive, battery life kinda sucks (be sure to get a car charger), they can be a little on the heavy side and they reboot a lot.
Up sides, apps are cool, the contact list is much easier to maintain / search, and there are a lot of new features apps.
Quite frankly I give it a few more years and I bet they have it down, but if you don’t want to wait then the one I would go for is the Treo650 which most of the majors will let you use.
I’ve used the Treo 300 and the Treo 600. The 300 is a nice, reliable, basic phone, but the flip cover is a structural weak point. Also, the version of PalmOS on it is now rather old and some of the cooler software won’t run on it. The 600 is lighter and smaller and I haven’t had problems with it rebooting.
You can hold the phone up to your ear like any other cell phone. The Treo 300 and later (maybe the earlier ones too, I’m not sure) have a speakerphone function so you can lay the phone down and have your hands free while you talk at it. The phones can also be used with a headset (if you get the Treo 300, bear in mind that it requires a headset with the less-common 4-pole, 2.5mm jack). I believe I’ve been able to take notes with the notepad application while talking on the phone.
If you’re not sure you’d really be well served by a smart phone, you could do what I did. I found a used Treo 300 for $11 on eBay (OK, mine was very banged up and I patched it together with Fimo, but you can buy one in pretty good condition very cheaply), switched my service over to it, and used it for a few months. I was very pleased with it. I also bought my Treo 600 used on eBay. If you buy a used phone and you don’t like the phone/PDA combo, you should be able to resell it on eBay for close to what you paid for it.
Personally, I LOVE my smart phone. I had been toting around a cell phone and a Handspring Visor PDA, and I was really, really tired of switching from one to the other or loading down my pockets with both. I also like being able to check my mail and monitor my servers via the web browser so I can respond to work “emergencies” without having to run home to my PC.
