An iPhone? Not for me!

Once in awhile, I thought I'd post about just some assorted topic that interests me. I had a good webstore topic all lined up and ready to get to work on, when real life intruded. My great little cellphone, a Sony Ericsson W600i sadly died on me. I won't say what happened to it, but suffice to say, it got wet and so, no more phone!

Now, I've never been one to pass up a good excuse to get a new gadget to play with, so I immediately went online to see what phones AT&T might have currently and whether I was eligible for an equipment upgrade. Frustratingly, I was just a couple months from getting their usual upgrade discount, but that was not about to dissuade me from getting a new toy. If I had to go on Ebay to get a decent price, so be it. I certainly couldn't be without a cell phone for any amount of time.

Now, a little more background may help here. I've long been a big PDA user. I've used Palms since they were called Pilots and then PalmPilots and then just Palms. I beta tested some of the earliest Pocket PC models for Microsoft, going back to Palms with some of the great early Sony models, even used the first PDA with a storage card (TRGPro) and the amazing game-based model the Tapwave Zodiac (still have to get around to selling this one!). I always preferred the Palm OS for its elegance and ease-of-use but finally switched to Pocket PC once Microsoft finally released a version of their pocket OS that wasn't quite so tedious to use. I saw and fell in love with the gorgeous Pocket Loox models made by Fujitsu-Siemens, and I didn't care if I had to ship one from overseas (as they aren't available in the US) I was going to have one! And get one I did and I've greatly enjoyed having it. It's a superb PDA, more of a mini computer and with memory slots for both CF and SD cards, you can pack it full of music, video, ebooks, whatever you want to bring with you.

Now, as I mentioned at the start of this article, I do use my cell phone for checking email and even reading webpages (love the Opera mini browser on it!) and I always felt that using it with the Loox was a perfect combo. I could carry the small phone with me when I needed something small and light and still quickly check emails. But there's no way I would try to send more than the shortest of replies on it, so when I needed more than just read-only functions, I could bring along the PPC and use bluetooth to send and receive emails using the phone as a modem. Many times I've looked at Smartphones, particularly when I'd see articles talking about how dedicated PDAs were on the way out, people only want SmartPhones or Blackberrys, etc. But to me, the Smartphones just were too much of a compromise. The screens were all lower resolution, smaller, cramped, etc. I was definitely spoiled by the gorgeous 640x480 VGA screen on my Loox. Memory and battery life on smartphones also takes a beating.

But I also was finding keeping two devices charged and ready to go all the time much more of a hassle than in the past. Working from home full-time now, I find I don't really need the PDA as much as when I was out and about much more. More than once I'd let the Loox sit in my purse long enough that the battery drained and lost all my data. Perhaps it was time to again look at what else was out there and get rid of the extra brick that I always carried around. My brother recently bought an iPhone and was pretty happy with it, and since I do use AT&T for my service, it seemed logical to look at that first.

Thing is, I've never been one to go with the most popular choice. Just seeing that list of PDAs I've used in the past would tell you that. When everyone else was buying iPods, I was researching other MP3 players and buying lesser known models that had better sound, battery life and features (not to mention didn't lock me into using iTunes). Today I use an iRiver clix (awesome little player, btw) and buy my music through Napster. When it came to buying a laptop, I went with a tablet PC, from a small independent company. A not very well-known type of portable system, but with some really neat and useful features that I get a lot of use out of. I always tend to go with the less-traveled path I guess. I probably would have gone with a Mac for my latest desktop system, rather than the much-maligned but still widely used Windows, but just have too much investment in the Windows platform at this time (and not really interested in having to run it all through virtualization software). So the last thing I would do is buy an iPhone just because it's cool and fun to use. I care more about whether it can serve my daily needs.

Looking at the iPhone, there's no doubt it has the nicest screen of any smartphone out there today. And the interface is quite fun and elegant. However, it's just too limited for me as a PDA. I don't really need a device that is more a music player and phone, for the times I really need an MP3 player, I already have my little clix for that. And I'd rather not kill my phone battery anyway by using it for music all the time. And hey, what's this, a non-replaceable battery?? On a phone?? No thanks! And no 3G? That's not good if you'd like to do web browsing. But the biggest issue for me with the iPhone is the lack of software. I probably have about 30 games and 20 other applications on my PDA. Okay, maybe I don't need THAT many, but I definitely need to be able to load up my ebooks, password manager, favorite games and such. So as neat as that iPhone looks, it just is too limited for what I like to do.

This didn't leave me a lot of options though. Most other phones like the Treos and Blackberrys didn't appeal to me much with smaller screens and different OSes. No, what made the most sense for me would be to use a Windows Mobile system with at least a 240x320 QVGA screen. And when I saw the Cingular/AT&T 8525, I knew I was on the right track.

This Windows Mobile 5 phone is made by HTC and known by other names, the Hermes or the TyTN. It supports 3G, bluetooth, Wifi, has a slideout keyboard, microSD slot for additional memory, and a fairly decent QVGA screen. A fairly decent 2 Meg camera with light is included, and a true scroll wheel (not just a jog wheel like my PPC). So I'd have to downgrade on my internal memory and large VGA screen, but otherwise should be able to run at least most of my current applications and games (some won't run on Windows Mobile, but the majority will). From the photos I was expecting a brick like some smartphones in the past I'd seen, but when I went to the store to check it out and see how big and heavy it was, I was pleasantly surprised. Sure, it's bigger and bulkier than most phones but it was somewhat smaller and lighter than my PDA. In return for having a screen I wouldn't have to strain to read, I was willing to make the sacrifice. I was all ready to try and buy one off of Ebay to save at least a couple hundred off the full price, but the sales guy at the AT&T store talked his manager into pushing my equipment upgrade back in return for the upgrade for data service that I'd need to get. And of course a new contract. I've had no complaints though, sure they charge far more than is probably reasonable for data service, but at least it's no longer the $70-80/month we've had in the past!

Once I got this baby home though, I wasn't satisfied to just load up my apps and use it as-is. I had done a little research and found that a lot of 8525 users were flashing their devices with the Windows Mobile 6 ROM. And you could not only get the official WM6 ROM, there were all kinds of custom ROMs that included some of the HTC addon apps, plus freeware utilities and other improvements to give you better battery life and performance. I spent almost a whole day reading over the instructions (so as not to ruin my new phone) and made sure that I'd be able to flash it back if need be (after all, this does invalidate the warranty)! And off I went, flashing about 3 or 4 different ROMs until I found the one I liked best. This one gave me the nice HTC Home application for the Today screen, with integrated weather, email and call notification, improved connection manager, ability to access extended ROM memory, and much more. I had to do some extra customization to get the Home app working the way I wanted, accessing local weather, nicer clock font, etc. and run some other configuration functions that the ROM comes with. But now I have a phone that is second to none! It's great to look at and while the smaller screen is taking a bit getting used to, it's certainly a nice compromise from using my tiny cell phone most of the time! So far, I've only run into one program that wouldn't run on the new OS (a game, so no big loss) and indeed have found that a lot of my old apps I don't really need with the improved functions of the new WM6 OS and the nice HTC Home app. I even loaded on a Voice command program that can do everything from dial contacts to run programs.

So far, I don't have a single complaint about this device. Even with all the ROMs I've been playing with, it hasn't once crashed on me, or locked up. I had a temporary issue with ActiveSync but that seems to be working fine now, and so far the battery life has been superb, even with checking email regularly. The screen does seem a tad cramped coming down from a full VGA screen, but it still is very colorful and bright, and most of my apps look great on it. Gamebox Solitaire is still gorgeous! So definitely 5 stars for this little phone, it wasn't cheap but it was well worth the cost.

UPDATE: Well, this little saga just keeps going! While reading some online support forums for my new phone, I saw an announcement that AT&T had just released a new model called the Tilt. Not 3 days after I had bought mine. I pulled up the AT&T site and saw that the Tilt was actually priced lower than the 8525, a full $100 less after rebates. Hhm, this seems strange, seems like it would be more expensive since it's newer. I did some checking on the web and found that it is indeed a better model, running the new Windows Mobile 6 OS, with a 3 MB camera (versus 2 MB), twice as much memory, built-in GPS, tilt screen (nice when using the keyboard) and a new slick black casing. I called up AT&T and they said I had a 30-day return on the 8525 and was welcome to swap it but they seemed to think that the Tilt had to have a slower CPU or *something* for it to be priced lower. Nope, it actually has a better CPU too! So who knows what AT&T are doing, it's clear this is a better model, and for $100 less, I ran right over and swapped my 8525 for the slick new model (after restoring the original ROM of course). And it's a beauty for sure. My biggest complaint is that AT&T really went crazy with the extra memory and loaded all kinds of bloatware on it that you don't really need. Thankfully, within a couple days, you could download and install the original manufacturer's ROM (HTC Kaiser) from xda-developers which is not only much more compact but looks stunning as well! It uses a black theme that looks great with the new black casing on the device. I'm still working on getting it configured just the way I like, but so far, I am loving this new phone and will be happy to say goodbye to my PDA forever!