I've got three of the main types of smartphones here on my desk. They are all older but are good representations of type.
SDA (HTC Tornado) - Windows Mobile smartphone. No KB. Wifi/BT.
MDA (HTC Wizard) - Windows Mobile PocketPC. Slide-out KB, Wifi/BT
Palm Treo 600 - chiclet KB, no connectivity other than phone data (gprs or whatever)
You will notice I did not include whatever sparkly fashion device Apple is pushing this year.
Hardware
MS wins.
Connectivity
MS wins. MS phones dominate on connectivity.
Interface
Palm, absolutely. It's a primitive UI but is immediately usable and understandable.
Syncing
Palm syncs to everything; windoze, linux, bsd, unix, a toaster, a clump of dirt.
MS might sync to one workstation if you have good karma. It's a train wreck. Much easier to sync over wifi than over the supplied cable, believe it or not.
Software
Palm wins kerbillion to one. PalmOS software is falling from the skies like manna, and most is free. Take your pick. Go crazy.
MS software is hard to find and is usually $$$. I have found exactly two useful free MS apps: the freeware version of btaudio and TCPMP.
Conclusion
So what do I use? I go back and forth. I get about 6mos out of each one before I get cheesed off and rotate. Right now I'm running the ancient Palm and loving it. Too bad Palm is corportately suicidal.
Be Advised
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If there is stuff on this blog that you wish to have access to in the
future best save it. Let’s say you have till this Friday.
6 years ago
Afterthought.
ReplyDeleteThe main reason I am using the Palm again now is the calendar is easy to access and use. As in, someone says "are you available on such-and-such date" and you can reply in a timely manner. Palm makes it a matter of a less than a second. WM takes click and click and drill and wander and change the view and....
Update.
ReplyDeleteHad a real opportunity to use the Palm calendar functions; I was able to immediately respond to the calendar check.
The Palm's radio pulls 3-4 bars in locations where the WM phones wouldn't get any bars. And the battery life is excellent compared to the WM phones. I still miss BT and WiFi, but these are the tradeoffs.
Another update. Found a Treo 650 I forgot I had.
ReplyDeleteWins for Palm: Continuing joy with the interface. RF excellence.
Wins for WM: mini USB charging/syncing is excellent. Palm proprietary cable is suck.
WM's btaudio+genericBluetoothEarpiece is awesome. Palm's SAG+ad2pBluetoothEarpiece is much more $$$ and less stable.
WM phones handle bluetooth in general more elegantly than Palm phones.