Other than the iPhone, is there an AT&T phone for me?
I am currently using an E62 on AT&T, and aside from the lack of WiFi I love it. I purchased it just before AT&T took over Cingular. Thanks to their shitty corporate decisions the ONLY smartphones they now offer are non-Nokia. I like Nokia too much to settle on something else. While I had considered an iPhone, for the price I think I’d rather keep my keyboard. Were I to upgrade, I’d buy an (unlocked, natch) Nokia and keep my existing AT&T service, not bothering to tell them that I had upgraded. That way I’m not locked in to their service contract. The E61i would be my phone of choice now; all the features I currently have (with the loss of the USB port – no biggie as I sync it via Bluetooth), plus camera and WiFi. I see no reason to go with an “upgrade” from AT&T if that means eliminating features I already have on the phone. Eliminating stuff != upgrade, in my book. User-replaceable battery, full, tactile keyboard, and hot-swappable expansion slot for microSD card trumps the features a
Just to add another data point, the next-generation Blackberry Bold is rumored to be released on AT&T at the end of October. That’s probably why the current generation of Blackberries are being sold so cheaply. It will have more features comparable to the iPhone. I have an iPhone, and I think it’s a pretty below-average phone. For example, if you have a missed call, the phone won’t beep or do anything to get your attention. If you have a voicemail, the phone will beep… once. Thankfully I use it to check my email/look up stuff so frequently that it hasn’t been an issue. Visual voicemail is once of the greatest things to happen to voicemail. No more clunky “press 7 to delete this voicemail” stuff, you see all your voicemails at the same time along with who sent them, and you can play them back in any order you want. Charging the thing every day is a drag. If I go on a trip, I have to bring the charger, or turn everything off. Otherwise the phone will be dead in two days.
Thanks for a great post devbrain. I’m a regular, professional user of smartphones; by that, I mean I use them every day for my work. Historically, I’ve moved from a Treo 650 (ok-ish), to a Blackjack (didn’t like it), to a Nokia E61, to a Nokia E61i. The Nokia is, by far, the best phone, but I don’t really like Symbian (the OS). Also, the E61i is kinda slow, especially when running Good Mail (the application we use for Exchange Mail integration). I should be picking up an E71 for testing soon. Last week I got an iPhone 3G to play with (my work pays for all this), and despite myself, I kinda like it. I like the integrated iPod. The location software, maps and GPS is cool. The apps you can buy are nice. But, big big BUT… the virtual keyboard is amazingly annoying. There is no way I will be able to use this to “keep in touch” with my co-workers, sending & receiving lots of emails everyday. I guess it could be used to certainly read my incoming mail, but typing is a pain. Plus, landscape
My experience with the iPhone came after using a 8100 (original Pearl) for a year+. What I liked about the iPhone: * Fantastic web browser. Big screen. Decent zoom in/zoom out and flick to scroll made it a dream. It was also more functional on complex sites. Big screen is also nice for reading emails. * Not so good for writing with the virtual keyboard I didn’t really like so much. I type by touch on a real keyboard and mostly by touch on the phone keyboard. Can’t do that on a virtual one 🙁 (That’s also why I prefer the pearl to the curve — smaller keyboard means I can touch type and not look & type) * Great address book. Ties in with the OSX app, and – the big boon – you can name entries as you wish. You’re not tied into “home” “work” “mobile” as labels. The whole iPhone as a phone is very slick, very well thought out, very smooth. * Answering calls was a plus. It’s the only phone I’ve used where you can pick up on your headset by answering on your headset, and pick up on the hands
About, oooo, a year ago now I got a Palm Treo 650. It was OK. A bit of a let down because I was expecting it to do much more. There were many things I wanted it to do that it couldn’t do, but given I was on a contract there was little I could do beyond grin and bear it and see out the contract. About four months ago, the screen on it died. I sent it off to Palm for repair. One month passed. One and a half passed and I rang Palm who told me that they were only then just getting round to fixing it. Two months, still no contact, and I rang them again. They said they couldn’t fix the problem and they were just going to send me a new one. Three months passed and they sent me a new one, except it had the wrong software on it for the phone provider I was with so I couldn’t use it and sent it back. Four months on, there seems to be no light at the end of this dark tunnel. Anyway, during these four months I rang my provider and long story short, I was able to extract myself from my contract wit
