Local Insanity

I’ve been looking for a new cell phone over the last month or so. My current phone, the T616, has Bluetooth and syncs well with my MacBook via iSync. It turns out I can even use it as a Bluetooth modem for my computer! Why I didn’t learn about that several years ago when I bought the phone is beyond me. A few holes in functionality have popped up though, especially with the move to SF and the new job:

• Google Maps: exploring SF is great, but it’d be nice to be able to look up where things are without having to cart my laptop around and finding a Starbucks (yes, I’ve done that)
• Email: sometimes (like yesterday) when I’m expecting an email (which, incidentally, never came!) it’d be nice to know that I’ll know when it comes and I don’t have to keep wondering whether it’s been sent. also communicating quick things to my co-workers (answers to Ruby questions, perhaps?)

Some other nice-to-haves come to mind:

• Real web browsing, with a decent browser
• SSH access to various things

I don’t have a data plan at the moment, so there’s going to be an increased cost to all of this. That hasn’t been the biggest problem though. Here’s a rundown of the phones I’ve been considering:

Nokia E61/2

This phone is a PDA, and it runs Symbian OS. I’d never heard of it but it seems like a great alternative to Palm OS and Windows Mobile since it’s open and has lots of developer backing. The included browser is KHTML-based, and looks quite a bit like Safari (duh). It supports push email via Blackberry Connect and even works with iSync via a plugin. The screen is awesome and the size isn’t bad, since it’s actually a hair thinner than my T616. It’s GSM and runs on Cingular. The E61 variant even has Wifi. The downside? No 3G support, so it’s stuck at EDGE speeds. $99 w/2yr contract on Cingular.

Blackberry Pearl (8100)

This is closer to the candybar style that I’m used to, but features a scrunched QWERTY keyboard that puts two letters on one key. Maybe it’s just that I’m not used to it, but typing this way was a serious mind-tweak. I know I’m conditioned by every other cell phone to expect the three-letters-per-number setup, but I didn’t have any such problem on actual QWERTY keyboards like the N62. I think I’d get used to it after a little while. This phone is QUAD-band, like the N62, which would be great for travel abroad. The built-in browser is just a piece of WAP crap, but supposedly it supports Opera Mini, which might be better. That’s just one of the nice-to-haves though. I put Google Maps on the one at the T-Mobile store, and it was SO SLOW. Really god-awful. The included Navigation app was faster, so maybe I could get used to it. And since it’s a Blackberry it of course supports the push email thing. $199 w/2yr contract on Cingular.

T-Mobile Dash

I include this one mainly for completeness, as I did look at it briefly. What I liked about this one is the way it fits in your hand. It’s got a good size and has a kind of rubber that makes handling it nice. I really couldn’t abide Windows Mobile though, so this one is out of the running.

Sony Ericsson Z610i

This phone looks so sexy. The external display is one of those OLED screens that you can’t see when it’s not on. Great for one of the things I love about the T616: being a watch. Unfortunately it is only sold in the UK and lacks the 850 band, which is pretty much necessary if you spend any time in the US outside of major cities. Even if it was available here I don’t know how well I’d handle the flip-phone thing. My between-the-T616s phone was a Motorola V551, a flip phone, and I found it hard to like.

Sony Ericsson M600i

Now here’s a Symbian OS phone that is 3G! Hallelujah! Except… wait a minute, it’s a touch-screen? The reviews I’ve read for this phone claim that it is not easy to operate with one hand. Also, there’s no 850 band, so no Cingular! It features the same keyboard type as the Blackberry Pearl. I’d really have to try this one out before passing judgement on it. It sounds good on paper, but who knows?

To top off the confusion, all of these phones are GSM and should work with either Cingular or T-Mobile. The problem is that nearly all the phones available on these networks are EDGE, not 3G. If I want EVDO I have to move over to a CDMA network like Verizon or Sprint. Besides having more phones available with that fast connection, the other advantage on that side of the fence is that nearly all those phones have GPS built-in. The Helio Drift that I reviewed last month had this, and it was great. Google Maps actually knew where I was! I didn’t quite appreciate how nice this feature was at the time. However, I still wouldn’t have kept the Drift because of its lack of GMail support. If it did have GMail support that might have been enough to get me to keep it, since I’d basically scratched the sync itch with a script. The problem with CDMA phones is the difficulty in swapping them around. I’d rather not buy my phones through my carrier, and I’d ideally rather not involve them at all. GSM lets me do this just by swapping SIM cards.

It seems that there is no phone/service combination on the market today that ideally suits my needs. If I were forced to pick a phone today, I’d probably pick the Blackberry Pearl with its small form factor, scroll nipple that reminds me of the Mighty Mouse, and push email capabilities. On T-Mobile it’d cost me $199 up front with a 2yr contract and $59.98/mo for unlimited calling to five people (300 anytime minutes) and unlimited internet and push email. Contrast that to Cingular with $199 up front with a 2yr contract and $79.98/mo for 450 anytime minutes and unlimited internet and push email. From what I hear, Cingular has a faster EDGE network than T-Mobile (160kbps vs. 120kbps peak). You can see why I really want to like the Sony Ericsson M600i: 3G + Symbian OS. Alas, it’s the wrong 3G. So the winner: Sony Ericsson T616.

As mentioned in my previous post, I decided to give the MNVO Helio a go with its new, sexy Drift phone. In this post I’ll be listing my experiences with it over the last 11 days or so. Some of my comparisons will be made against the Sony Ericsson T616. Know it. Love it.

Call Quality and Reception

I know, weird to start off a phone review with this category, especially for a phone whose company asks you “Don’t call it a phone” and “Don’t call us a phone company”. As it piggybacks on Sprint, you’ll get the same coverage as Sprint. As I write this I’m in 93306, the outskirts of Bakersfield. I have full bars on both phones (Drift on Sprint, T616 on Cingular). Call quality on the Drift seems slightly better than the T616, but this could be simply my imagination.

Google Maps

The killer app on the Drift is Google Maps. In San Francisco the device is accurate to within a few meters, though during my Thanksgiving weekend I had to opportunity to test it in Bakersfield (um, yay?) and found that it would sometimes tell me that I was several miles from where I actually was. This made me wonder - is it actually a GPS or does it triangulate based on cell tower proximity? Despite its placing me at the local raceway when I was in fact at home, I have had good experiences with this app. It helped me find the Bubble Lounge, after all.

No Mac Support

Now to bring it down a notch. Being an avid Mac user, it is important to me that a device be able to talk with my MacBook if it makes sense for it to do so, and a phone certainly falls into this category. Address Book is the master, the source, the benevolent dictator that tells me who I know. He should be able to tell my phone who I know, and to continue to update my phone with the latest news of my social goings-on. Unfortunately I can’t do this with Helio and the Drift (but where there’s a will, there’s a script - post a comment if you want instructions).

In fact, I can’t even pair the thing with my computer due to a mismatch in the number of digits expected for the PIN. I never had a problem with my T616 or my Motorola V551. What’s up with that Samsung? The included USB cable doesn’t appear to do anything when I plug it in to the Mac, so the only way I could even get files onto the thing is to get a MicroSD card reader, a card, and then hook that up to my computer. This is a big thumbs down for me.

Look and Feel

NOTE: The stickers are still on the face and back of the thing, and that’s why the display looks a little funny.

First things first: it is a sexy beast. The device itself feels solid, despite the occasional weirdness of it moving slightly when I’m on the phone due to the slider form-factor. It is a little smaller than my T616, though not by much. It is slightly heavier as well, but when it’s in my pocket I don’t notice the difference. Looking at the picture to the right at a bigger size, you may notice the time on the T616. This is a handy feature, as I don’t wear a watch. The Drift lacks this touch. The soft buttons are of a similar setup on the two, and I like some features of each. Both have a “back” button, but they’re in different places. The Drift’s button is a little too close to the “down” button, leading me to accidentally press it a few times. The two soft buttons on both are easy to hit, but directional buttons in general are easier on the T616 due to its joystick configuration. This is countered by its occasional confusion of pressing the joystick in being taken as some other direction, a problem the Drift does not share. The Drift goes along with convention by having two large buttons: the green and the red, logically used when beginning something (notably calls) and ending something (as well as power).

The number pad on the Drift is revealed by sliding the face up, revealing buttons that are large but with no margin, which in practice I find harder to hit accurately than the smaller keys on the T616. When opened, all the keys on the Drift light up, including the soft keys, which is important due to their lack of margin. The Drift is relatively smart about when to use T9 vs. Multitap, but you have to tell it to use T9 the first time. One major annoyance is typing in the web browser, as there doesn’t seem to be a way to easily type a forward slash. You have to change the input type to Symbol, press down twice, then press 7 twice. Ack.

Also, the charger seems likely to cause less damage to the phone than with my T616 (I had a previous one that eventually stopped charging because the charger had broken the contacts on the phone). The only thing that remains to be seen is whether the flap will insist on sticking out like the RAZR’s is wont to do. As for the actual feel of the Drift, the side buttons make holding it a slightly more uncomfortable experience compared to the T616.

Camera

While this isn’t that important to me, it is a nice thing to have sometimes. I hadn’t used the camera up until this test, and I must say it’s pretty darn good. Be warned though, that this is from someone who’s current camera phone was made several years ago. The picture to the left is from the Drift. It is a somewhat challenging shot because of the intensity of the background light. Yet the drift did okay with it. By contrast, the T616 fell flat on its face, as shown below. However, I had to send the picture to myself from the Drift via MMS to my email, which took a few minutes. On the T616 I just used Bluetooth file transfer, which took about 10 seconds. Two steps forward, one step back.

Drift	T616

Browser

The browser seems like a good idea, but it’s pretty restricted. I could sign into GMail, but not actually see my messages. I couldn’t install the GMail app. As mentioned earlier, typing in URLs manually is a pain. Some sites are suggested for you (like Digg, MySpace, etc), but I find browsing on them reminiscent of a squinting contest. I wouldn’t use this phone if you plan to use the web a lot. As I don’t plan to use the web a lot on it, the jury is still out as to whether this will affect my final decision.

IM

Despite the crappy browser, it is still pretty usable as an IM client. It supports AIM, MSN, and Yahoo!, though Jabber is conspicuously missing. I’ve tried it with AIM and found it usable, but not terribly useful. Who wants to be reachable all the time like that? SMS and calling is enough of a distraction.

Email

Sending just a regular ol’ email seems to be done through the browser at Helio’s webmail site. This is pretty annoying as you must navigate to the site, log in, then send a message. This is not usable, though it could be useful if it were. I already mentioned that GMail is not supported, so look elsewhere for that functionality.

Baked-in Offline Apps

Apps such as the calendar, alarms, contact list etc. feel pretty good compared to the T616 and have more options, such as a recurrent alarm that happens only on weekdays (no more setting the alarm every night!). The ability to have a summary of your Todos and Calendar on the phone’s home screen is nice, though there’s no interactivity (which is probably for the best, as the confusion introduced by that would just be too much). Unfortunately, as mentioned before, there’s no sync here with the Mac. There may be with Windows, but that doesn’t matter to me.

Battery Life

My phone usage is maybe 15 minutes a day talk-time. I also have played around with the Google Maps thing for a few minutes at a time. So far the Drift seems to last about 2-3 days with this usage. This is worse than the T616, which goes about 3-4 days with this usage. The battery indicator on the Drift is also a discrete thing with four bars, whereas the T616 is more granular (and colored too!).

User Interface

The main user interface it pretty easy to get used to, but the Java apps don’t obey the same rules, nor do some of the built-in apps (like the MMS client). This is kinda weird, and stands in strong contrast to the T616 where all the built-in stuff has the same UI (of course the Java apps don’t, but there’s not much call to use them). But damn, isn’t that dialing screen nice?

Summary

The Drift is a nice sexy slider, but the jury is leaning toward canceling the Helio service, mainly because of the lack of Mac support. More on it in 10 days or so, when I’ll discuss the iPhone’s impact on my decision among other things.