[BTM] Best Bluetooth Phone FOLLOW-UP

[KOZAK Imre Oliver]

Sync is a question of standard of the sync language you use. Currently iCal
and Address Book uses the IrMC standard, and all IrMC phones can be
supported, but the new trend is SyncML, especially Symbian based phones.

However, by my opinion, all Symbian phones are poor in terms of connectivity.
The Symbian OS originates from Epoc/Psion, what always had poor connectivity.
First, Mac support of Psion was hyper-mega-poor, limited to file transfer via
a serial cable. Then the PC version, PsiWin, was excellent in functionality
(like seamless Copy/Paste between PC and Psion, Word/Excel conversion, the
best PIM sync I have ever seen, etc.). However, it was very unreliable, often
dropped the connection, and one could not rely on it. The recent postings of
the Nokia 7650 and the P800 are full of the same experiences - if the
connection works, it works great, but it is quite unstable. And there is no
support for the Mac!


To reply to your question:

>a. The superior Nokia/Siemens phones support Mac and iCal
I don't think it will happen. I rather think that when the R520, T39, T68
will be really outdated, Apple will look after new phones / sync standards to
support.

>b. Sony/Ericsson intros models that are equal in quality AND support
Mac/iCal (as it seems, there new phones don't do iCal).
SonyEricsson seems to stick with the Symbian OS for their PIM style phones,
and because it uses SyncML, it won't be supported by iCal, unless Apple
decides to support SyncML. Jonas (developer of MobileSync for Entourage)
promised to support P800 in the future, but he said that the P800 version of
SyncML is heavily customized, and hard to figure out.

c) Another scenario - this is what I think will happen.
There is the Pocket PC phone edition (with O2 XDA under various names) that
has a good sync support on the Mac thanks to ActiveSync. 
Second, there is Palm, what I really prefer, with excellent iCal/Addressbook,
and Entourage synchronization.

Now I have an all Bluetooth setup. iBook+USB BT, T68(BT), and Palm Tungsten T
(BT).
I would prefer a Palm OS device with BT and good phone capabilities. However,
current incarnations of Palm OS in phones are very poor. If you look on the
Treo range (very poor phone capabilites for the black and white models, or
unreadable screen for the color model) they are loosers for me. The Palm
Tungsten W is promising, but it does not have BT, and has a slow
implementation of GPRS:

So there's not much choice for your phone, if you want Bluetooth, Sync and
Mac support. This is not the situation where you have 4-5 models offering the
same funcionality, and you can decide on other criteria then functions. Now
there are phones that have the functionality you want, and there are phones
that does not.

I was really tired of the connection problems during the 6 years of Psion
use. So for me the key factor was: COMPATIBILITY.

This is why I have settled down on the T68(i) and Palm Tungsten T, because
they have the highest level of compatibility and integration with the Mac OS.

I suggest don't plan for the future. Technology is changing very fast now in
the mobile phone world. You cannot tell what will be your needs in a year or
two. Maybe we will have BT everywhere, and it won't be a question, GPRS will
be integrated in all mobile computers, there will be UMTS with 384 kpbs
connection speed for cheap...
I had to change my phones each 6 month because of lack of functionality. On
my second phone, I wanted SMS. Then I wanted Infrared. Then I wanted GPRS and
Wap. Now I wanted Bluetooth on my phone. I don't know what I will want on my
phone in 6 months or next year.

So I think the best strategy is to choose a Bluetooth phone that fulfill your
needs NOW. In 6 months or next year you can decide if it is enough for you,
or you want to upgrade and move your data on a new platform.

This is my view, and I am open for discussion either you agree or not.

Regards,
Imre



-- 

Date: Thu, 13 Mar 2003 17:33:37 -0500
Subject: Re: [BTM] Best Bluetooth Phone FOLLOW-UP
From: mindspring <jffdcksn1@ mindspring.com>
Message-ID: <BA967170.27AA%jffdcksn1@ mindspring.com>

Thanks KOZAK for the thorough summary; seems like the T68x is not nearly as
beloved as I'd suspected when I first posted my question.

Follow-up: Which is likely to happen first:
a. The superior Nokia/Siemens phones support Mac and iCal
b. Sony/Ericsson intros models that are equal in quality AND support
Mac/iCal (as it seems, there new phones don't do iCal).
c. another scenario