

Smartphone Decision for Young Programmer? - alnayyir

Switching to T-mobile soon and want to take advantage of their excellent data plan, I also have need of a "rough" GPS device although a fully functioning one is a plus. I know my way around enough that just having google maps 'should' be enough.<p>Anyway, my choices are any smartphone that is unlocked and GSM. My primary contenders are<p>Palm Treo, for the price factor since I can get one for under $200 unlocked.<p>Apple iPhone, for under $500, although the totalitarianism is a serious turn-off.<p>Any Good Windows Mobile Phone?<p>Nokia N95, heard it was good, but the reports of cheap construction and laggy interface are a huge turn-off for me. I hate laggy interfaces. Love the GPS though.<p>Who among you are very happy with their smartphones?<p>Ability to do wifi is important, GPS is a plus, a good ecosystem of applications is a near-must since I'd like to tether without paying the ridiculous fees for it.<p>Hackability/Open Platform is a plus, I'm a programmer so something I can tinker and learn on, and provide my own solutions to small problems is a big boon for me.<p>A decent web browser is a small plus, but Opera Mini is near ubiquitous, so it shouldn't be a huge deal.<p>Please offer your suggestions for phones!
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martythemaniak
As I've posted elsewhere, I think the Blackberry if vastly underestimated by
people around these parts, which I don't really understand.

The OS is rock solid, they have very durable hardware construction, a huge
number of features compared to the iPhone and a $20 API key will get you
access to APIs which iPhone users only dream about (regular APIs require no
key).

I don't know what you mean by hackability. The iPhone is good because with the
amount of attention it has received, you can get a huge number of cracked
applications, something you won't find on the BB. If you were planning on
actually buying apps, this won't be a problem.

I used about 12 different BBs for a year and half, and about 2 weeks ago
brought an iPhone. I am trying to give it a fair shot, but to be honest I will
probably have to sell it soon - the amount of sacrifices you have to make up
to use that pretty GUI are just too many.

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nailer
> The OS is rock solid > I used about 12 different BBs for a year and half

I've used a Blackberry, an iPhone, Nokia N95, and Windows Mobile 2005/6 in the
last 4 years.

Blackberry was _by far_ the most stable. Mine never ever crashed, after about
a year and a half of daily use.

Is there a BB with a gecko / webkit / opera browser?

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smhinsey
You can download Opera for the BB (at leas the Curve, whatever model that is)
but I honestly found that I preferred the built-in Browser app over it, and I
am a long-time Opera user. Trying to use the mobile Opera is when you really
start to feel constrained by the BB's UI.

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christefano
It doesn't meet your criteria, but I recommend the Palm Centro without
hesitation. The ecosystem of developers and applications (freeware, shareware
and commercial) is enormous.

Say what you will about the operating system being old (not to mention the
sad, backwards ways of Palm, the company), but my Centro is running brand new
programs alongside 8 year old applications without a problem. Oh, and the
Centro has real copy and paste.

The GSM version of the Centro also has the lowest SAR radiation levels of any
phone I've seen (it's something like 0.74).

I share my Centro's data plan over Bluetooth with my Nokia N810 tablet all the
time. Ironically, all my Palm software also runs on the N810 with the Garnet
VM from Access.

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alnayyir
I'll definitely look into it, I did consider a Palm in general in lieu of that
Treo I mentioned. If it's price competitive and it has some of the features
I'm looking for, I'll strongly consider it. Thanks for the heads up.

Personally not concerned with the radiation levels though. Power output of a
cellphone is a couple orders of magnitude below anything I see causing cancer
or non-trival DNA damage.

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capoeirista
What constitutes trivial DNA damage?

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alnayyir
the amount you receive by spending 1 hour in the sun.

next question?

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rcoder
I have a BlackBerry Curve on T-Mobile, and generally think it's the best
mobile email client I've ever used. There are a decent number of downloadable
apps, and OTA J2ME provisioning is actually pretty awesome. In terms of
"hackability", it's tough to find anything better than a full-featured,
reasonably-fast Java stack, since you can do development and deployment from
your choice of platforms and hosting providers.

However, the Curve firmware (at least at OS version 4.3) has two major flaws.
First, it's intermittently crash-prone and slow when using 3rd-party
applications. Second, it locks up after a few minutes and has to be hard-
rebooted when I try to use it as a Bluetooth modem for my Mac, which is
especially annoying since a full restart takes more than five minutes.

Regardless, I still think I made the right choice in selecting the Curve over
an iPhone, for one simple reason: UMA. Being able to pay $20/mo. for unlimited
calling over any WiFi network has already paid for itself many times over when
I've been outside the US (or even in rural parts of the US) and avoided having
to pay roaming fees.

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christefano
Have you used the MidpSSH client for the BlackBerry? I'd be interested to hear
how well it works compared to what's available for iPhone, Palm OS, etc.

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babul
Anything with a full touch screen is a good start.

Found the iPhone 3G was disappointing (more like a toy) compared to my
Blackberry.

However, the HTC I've been using for about a year
(<http://www.coolsmartphone.com/article727.html>) is excellent and definitely
the best of the lot.

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alnayyir
Intriguing. Can I find a tethering app to access my phone's internet via my
laptop using Windows Mobile on this HTC? I was interested in the HTC Touch,
but the reviews killed it for me. This one looks fascinating.

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etfb
I had a Nokia N70 before I got my N95, and the N95 is definitely must faster
(less "laggy") but still not perfect. The quality is fine, and I can't think
of many features it doesn't have. If you want a good, solid, reliable phone,
the N95 is the best thing I've ever seen from Nokia, and I place Nokia at the
top of the list for mobiles.

As for something you can hack -- I don't know. I gather there are options for
the Nokias, but I've never got around to trying them. I'd avoid MS and Apple
on principle (the totalitarianism, as you say, is a deal breaker) and Palm is
a bit overpriced and underpowered; they're really stuck in the 1990s, the poor
dears. What does that leave? Not much.

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alnayyir
While I'm not a partisan, and value trying to be as even-handed as possible in
evaluating situations, I hand Microsoft the torch in the case of mobile.
They've been far more fair, open, and straight-forward with Windows Mobile and
the APIs.

Bonus points that I use Windows dev platforms on a regular basis, so it would
be fairly trivial for me to deploy on a windows mobile phone.

Still bouncing around the ideas I'm seeing.

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tsuraan
I have a blackberry pearl with t-mobile, and it's not bad. The data rate is
slow (200k if you're lucky, usually much lower than that), but it lets you use
the DUN bluetooth profile when connected with OSX, so it's an acceptable
wireless modem, and a decent phone. The DUN profile only seems to work with my
powerbook though; I've tried using the phone as a bluetooth modem with my
nokia 770, and the blackberry won't advertise that profile in that situation.
I don't understand how that works, but it's a limitation to be aware of.

I'm personally holding out for an Android device, mostly because the pearl
thing in the blackberry gets crap in it and then you can't really use the UI
until you manage to work the dust particles out.

Also, what is this excellent data plan you're speaking of? Is it just the
$40/month unlimited internet plan on their 2G network, or is there an actual
3G data plan somewhere that I haven't been able to find?

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alnayyir
non blackberry devices get unlimited data for $20, this is why I'm trying to
avoid blackberry devices, or at least avoid letting them know I have one.

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tienshiao
In my area, the BlackBerry plan is also $20. On HowardForums, people used the
BlackBerry plans when the data plan got bumped up to $30.

Unless you're grandfathered into the ancient $5.99 T-Zones plan, I don't think
you will find a cheaper option.

Also, I think a BlackBerry without the BlackBerry plan will be heavily
neutered. I'm guessing email won't work because it depends on the BIS backend.
BIS is used for "personal" email things like your school's Exchange server,
your Gmail account, and your IMAP/POP account. BES is used for hooking up with
corporate Exchange setups running BlackBerry's Enterprise backends.

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sharjeel
I've been using HTC P3300 (<http://www.gsmarena.com/htc_p3300-1693.php>) and
I've found it almost a replacement for my laptop to use it on the go. I use it
to check my mails, browsing (OperaMini rox), connect to my servers using
Putty, car navigation using Pocket Google Maps, WarDriving, storage device and
a lot of other stuff including using it as speedometer :)

I am thinking about upgarding to HTC TyTn II or HTC Touch Pro. Both are great
phones. Infact Windows Mobile is a cool platform with so many useful
applications. Windows Mobile doesn't is great out of the box but with little
tweaking no other phones can beat it.

I recommend that you go for any Windows Mobile 6.1 based device. However HTC
TyTn II and Touch Pro are highly recommended :)

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tienshiao
I would advise against a PalmOS based device if you plan on doing development.
The OS is outdated, and on its last legs.

The iPhone OS, Windows Mobile, and the BlackBerry OS are all more modern and
have better tools. Can't comment on Symbian.

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christefano
Agreed. Not only is it old, nobody really knows what plan or timetable Access
has for it.

If I were a developer of mobile phone software, I'd go iPhone all the way.
Despite Apple's restrictions, every single iPhone owner would have easy and
immediate access to my software. RIM's version of an "app store" looks pretty
empty at the moment:

<http://na.blackberry.com/eng/builtforblackberry/>

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saundby
I'll be interested in what folks have to say, too. I have a Nokia 3650 I'm
looking to replace. It's been a nice system for years, but it's time to move
on. The main thing I've missed on the 3650 is a keyboard. Actually coding on
the system is prohibitively slow except for the shortest bug fixes or constant
changes. T-Mobile's data service has been good and affordable for me, so at
this point I'm not looking to change providers.

If the Nokia 810 had a phone I'd get one in a heartbeat.

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alnayyir
Roommate has one, it's nifty but one of the laggiest mothers I've ever used.
I'd go berserk using it as a phone, personally. :\

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astrec
Nokia addressed most of the N95 issues you describe with the N95-3, also
called the N95 8Gb.

'Tethering' (bluetooth) is trivial so long as you know the APN. Works great on
the train for me.

Browser is webkit based and works very nicely, except in their wisdom they've
made tabs difficult.

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LKM
Obvious solution: Buy iPhone. Get approved by Apple as a developer. Write
awesome application. Make 1000+ bucks a day. Buy every other cell phone on
your list and compare them yourself. :-)

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hapless
I think I'm missing something important here.

What is the purpose of a smartphone in the first place, particularly for 'a
young programmer' ?

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blender
I've been considering getting an Openmoko:

<http://www.openmoko.com>

Cheers

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ensignavenger
I've got a friend with an HTC touch, and it is awesome. Definitely recommend
taking a look at the HTC lineup.

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nailer
Don't ever rely on HTC backup tools.

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sbt
I would recommend getting Nokia E71 if you can get it in the US.

