I am jealous of all the shiny new phone technologies about the place, and am trying to decide whether to join the revolution.
I have found a package that I am interetsed in - HTC Wildfire on Orange. This would cost me £20 a month on a 2 year contract for which i would get 100 minutes, unlimited texts & 500 Mb / month
What I am stryggling to decide is if I will get £20 a month worth of value out of such a phone. What apps are available, and at what cost? People who alreadyu have a smart phone, do they add value, or are they just a shiny status symbol?
Yes, it does, but mine only has productivity/personal finance apps on it (Mint, Pocket Informant, Toodledo). I don’t use it for much internet surfing or watching media or anything like that.
I got it because all the recruiters I talked to insisted that it’s necessary since they give people really tight turnaround deadlines when they’re accepted for interviews/networking events etc. (this is because they usually pay for travel and lodging and don’t have much time to set it up). I learned this the hard way when I was accepted to a really competitive conference and was away from email all day long (too hard to access on flip phone) and I missed the deadline to respond, which was by 6 that day. I wrote back to them explaining that I was in a class and didn’t have a smartphone and because they were really, really, really nice, they extended it and let me in anyway.
So I think it’s what you make of it. I don’t game and I don’t like reading stuff off the phone (I have an iPhone). But I do like that it gives me access to my email so I don’t commit these faux pas, that I have really amazing calendar/task apps that help me keep track of my appointments and that I have a personal finance app that allows me to keep track of my money. And if I’m at an airport, I can kill some time on it if I want to (although I’m usually reading an overpriced magazine).
I like constant access to my email (though unlike some people I’m perfectly able to ignore it if I want to, rather than feeling encumbered). I’ve had my Droid for a few months now, and I’m still getting used to the fact that pretty much wherever I am, when I have an “I wonder what ______ means” or “how does _____ work” or “what movie have I seen her in before” question, instead of trying to remember to look it up later I can find out immediately.
Probably more importantly, it integrates really well with my Google calendar, shows me my upcoming agenda, reminders, alarms, notes. I’m forgetful. I used to do all this stuff with a separate PDA, but I wouldn’t have it with me all the time (nor would I always have a network connection for calendar updates, and then I’d forget to sync it later). In the US, of course, I pay quite a bit more than whatever the current equivalent of £20 is, and it’s certainly worth it to me.
That depends entirely on you. If your profession requires that you be available to your clients via email as much as possible, then that alone would be worth more than that.
When the Blackberry phones first came out and gave businesscritters that capability for the first time they didn’t start calling it the “Crackberry” for nothing
I’m retired, and my new smartphone (which I’ve had for all of a week now) certainly isn’t going to pay for itself in any monetary sense. For me, it’s just that it’s so much fun!
I’ve got an iPhone, and what it means is that I’ve really no excuse to be bored. I’ve got a couple of newspaper sites on it along with a bunch of games, so that whenever I’ve got a few minutes, I always have something I can be doing on it.
And as for the OP, is the £20 a month over and above what you’d pay to have a simple mobile phone?
Don’t change your mind in favour of a WIndows Mobile phone (HTC still has one or two of them in its current range). I switched from a PalmOS Treo to a Windows Mobile Treo a while back and although I found it initially a little impressive because the GUI is less spartan than PalmOS, there’s nothing particularly brilliant about the OS itself - and lots that is horrible.
I never used my cellphone much, but my Droid turned out to be far more useful than I expected. Still don’t use it much as a phone, but the email is very handy when I’m away, I use Google Maps with traffic info every day, I have made use of GPS once in a while, and I plug it into my car to play music all the time. So it replaced three things with one, and every so often I actually use the browser. Well worth it. I don’t play games on it, and I don’t think I’d ever actually read a book on it, so I don’t even make full use.
If you liked PalmOS, you might consider a WebOS phone the next time you upgrade. Unfortunately, they haven’t released new hardware recently, but with luck that’ll be back on track with the completion of the buyout by HP. WebOS is brilliant IMO, a good combination of easy and powerful.
