Hey,
I’m shopping around for a new cell phone and my requirements seem to differ from those of 99.9% of the population. I’m having trouble comparing phones because the things I care about the most are not even in the smallest print of spec sheets or review sites. I thought about rambling on in paragraph form, but I think a list would suffice.
Let’s get the simple “No” out of the way
[ul]
[li]Nothing wider than a regular phone. Most PDA phones like Blackberry and Treo are too wide and bulky. I want to be able to carry it in my shirt pocket without discomfort. [/li][li]No QWERTY or QWERTY-like keypads, no touch-screen-only input[/li][li]No protruding camera bits[/li][/ul]
Now for the actual requirements/desires, most important first
[ul]
[li]Quick basic features - I don’t want any noticeable latency (>500ms) when accessing phone book, SMS messages, settings, dialing, etc.[/li][li]EDGE-capable GSM/GPRS phone, preferrably europe-ready[/li][li]Quick app features - I want it to support third party applications, like most phones do. I don’t care if it’s Java, Symbian or something obscure as long as the subsystem launches in under 2-3 seconds. It must quit instantly or near-instantly. My previous phone (Sony Ericsson T637) met it’s fate when I threw it against the wall because it took longer than 15 seconds to exit a Java application. I don’t have rage issues, but I work in embedded electronics and I know what kind of incompetence breeds softare latency. [/li][li]Background app features - let applications actually run in the background during normal phone operation. There is a Java API for this, but most phones I’ve had did not support it properly. [/li][li]Built-in PDA-like features. However this is a fine line - I don’t want Outlook-style PDA crap. I want something adapted for speed and limited input capability. For example ideally I would be able to set a reminder in “n” hours, using 6-7 button presses and without looking at the screen and taking my phone out of the pocket. I don’t need to write down what the reminder is for, when it goes off I’ll most likely remember. Or at worst I can fill it in later when I have time. [/li][li]Bluetooth support that works well and doesn’t take forever to turn on and off. [/li][li]SMS archive more than 100 messages, ideally up to available memory with searching/sorting/folders. [/li][li]This is sometimes provider specific, but wireless web feature should start instantly. All of the latency better be network latency.[/li][/ul]
I know a phone like this simply does not exist because it’ll cost as much as a PDA-phone and do remarkably less, but quickness is the most important aspect of every single feature for me. It’s a communication device - it should handle three things perfectly, or at least better than the previous generation: 1) Communication between me and other parties 2) Communication between me and the phone. 3) Communication between the phone and other hardware. The voice latency is good on most modern cell phones because if it wasn’t, people wouldn’t buy them. Why do we put up with horrid response times when communicating with embedded devices themselves? My DVD player ejects about 15 seconds after you press the eject button. My tape player had a mechanical eject that functionally did the same thing but did so instantly. Is there anything even close? What are my options and what do I have to settle for?
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A lot of people complain about the useless features they throw into phones. I mean it’s a phone, it should just make calls and that’s it. Well, I think that’s a question of personal preference but my main issue is that none of the new features even work correctly. When I look up specs and see a cell phone powered by a 300Mhz ARM and I’m twiddling my thumbs while it’s pulling up my address book I don’t friggin care if it can also do 3D graphics in games - I want my address book! And if it has 24MB of built in flash and an SD expansion slot, and then I’m limited to saving 100 SMS messages on the phone (I could understand if it actually stored them on the SIM or something), I don’t care how many MP3’s I can download onto it, I want to store my correspondence!
I recently turned on my 386DX 25Mhz laptop and it booted to Win 3.1 a lot faster than my current phone (Motorola V551) can boot into its OS. I was curious. I speed-stepped the laptop down to 6.25Mhz (It had speed-step like thing but it was under manual control) and booted again. It took a lot longer, but it was still faster than the V551. I’m talking about booting, not even connecting to the tower, which takes an additional 10 seconds or so. And only then can it load the wall paper, maybe after 30 seconds. stabstabstab What is wrong with software engineers of my generation? I keep seeing open source and commercial code that would have won an intentionally worst design contest 15 years ago.
Gah!
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</rant>**