History always repeats itself and sometimes that's good. Here's a second chance to be part of it: tmdtc.com

Thursday 26 July 2007

I need a PDA phone!

I'm currently looking to get a new phone with PDA functionalities. I used a Palm Zire to keep all my contacts, but it's getting old and nearly unusable. My first choice would be to get a device running on Free Sofware, but none of these devices are broadly available (I know the Green phone by Trolltec and the Neo 1973 runiing on OpenMoko, but these are currently more developers products), and they don't cover my needs from what I've read.

I could buy a PocketPC device and put Familiar on it, but I'm not motivated disappointing experience with the Zaurus. I never found a satisfying solution for synchronisation with my desktop. And I'm confused over which environment I should run. GPE? I prefered Opie but I'm waiting for Opie 2 since I don't remember when. Qtopia? Or should I go for Angström? And I still wouldn't have the phone capabilities.

This leaves me with devices running on proprietary software. There's HTC, which I was told by a friend are good, and you can possibly install linux on it, but it can be tricky as HTC doesn't support the Free Software development for their platform (even no tech specs are shared).

And then there's Nokia. I first saw the N95, which is really a beautiful product: good phone functionality and ergonomy thanks to S60 platform (that's a pre-requisite...), 5MP camera, GPS, WIFI, etc. However I heard negative feedback about the integration of all these functions, and I'm not convinced I could keep my addressbook up to date by entering all data on a GSM keyboard (type 2 times on 3 for the lettre e...). For the price of the N95, I'd prefer something really good :-)

And this morning I discovered the E90. Even more expensive, but with really interesting features: a big 800 pixel wide screen and a keyboard become available when you open it. There's still a 3.2MP camera, GPS, Wifi, etc. I thinks this is really what I need, but I'll wait a bit to find the right promo and read further reviews, although those I read are really positive.

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