What do I need to know about GSM phones to use them with one service provider or another, specifically as it pertains to Palm OS based “smart” phones? Do I just need to make sure I have quad frequency (1800/1900/850/900) for anywhere-use, or is there something more involved?
I ask, because every friggin’ time I try to research one of these bad boys, the stupid provider sites (Kyocera, Samsung, Palm) insist on showing me phones only by provider, which is against the whole point – I want to purchase an unlocked phone at full price so I can use it with whatever damn provider I want, especially since I’m now back and forth between two different countries, and my home provider offers nothing in a Palm OS phone.
Also, does anyone have practical experience using replacement contact managers – such as Contacts to Go – with Palm OS phones? Perfect synchronization with Windows-based Outlook is a must, and the built in address book always kind of sucked, unless, maybe, the Palm OS 5 version on the smart phones is now fully capable?
Finally, I fully realize this is kind of a stupid place for questions like this, and – for me – these are stupid-type questions (I usually answer these!), so is there a decent Straight-Dope-like place that specializes in these things? Danke schoen, errr, gracias!
If you get an unlocked GSM phone and it supports the necessary band, then it should just be a case of inserting your SIM card and off you go; finding - as far as I know, it’s the phone that gets locked to restrict it to a certain network, not vice versa (that is to say that I don’t think the SIM card or the network cares about your specific model or unit of handset).
I have a Treo 600 that I’m very very happy with, but I’m just using it with the provider who supplied it. The contacts manager is quite good, but I’m not sure what you might be looking for.
Sorry, somewhere in the middle of all that, it was meant to say finding an unlocked phone is the problem, once you’ve got one, it should work on anything (that is, after all, the point of unlocking)
I’ve never had any difficulty finding them on eBay … although that part of the site is notorious for scams, etc. Fortunately I’ve had no problems in that respect.
Hmmm…. upon further review, I see that problem. I was under the mistaken belief that I could always buy a regular GSM cell phone directly from the manufacturers, and that it was only the Palm OS phones that were “don’t look at us; go to your provider” type of nonsense (I’d not been looking at non-Palm OS phones). As it turns out, it looks like all of the phones from all of the manufactures have their stupid, exclusive marketing agreements.
So now I’m not so sure I want one of these – I’d have to buy it from a friggin’ vendor full price, have it unlocked with the seller’s knowledge, and be stuck with the crap that the particular vendor pre-programmed. I’m having nightmares about buying Windows machines – you know, crap pre-installed, no no real way to get rid of it because instead of a real install CD, they give you a crummy restore CD.
Mangetout – I assume that to call a contact without physically having to dial a number means having in the built-in contacts manager, right? Is it a better system than, say, the old contacts on Palm OS 4 and prior?