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Well, if you mean by that that there is nothing resembling what I want out there, then yes, you're right.

But if you mean that I can't tell you what I'd like, well, no.

Actually, as of last night, I want an iPhone ;-), but even so, lovely as it is, it doesn't do all I want from a PDA and could not.

What I was saying was that the requirements of my ideal PDA and those of my ideal phone are too different for any one device to be both. It's not possible.

For the PDA:

I want a C21 Psion 5mx: something like a Nokia N800 Internet Tablet, but in the form factor of the Psion, and additionally with the same range of apps as the Psion and a keyboard as good as the Psion's.

For the phone:

I want a Nokia 6310i, with 3G and Wifi, plus a bigger higher-res screen, more flexible UI, more customisability and masses of memory, which can seamlessly sync to any kind of computer - Windows, Mac, Linux, whatever - via USB2 or wirelessly. It should, in essence, be a phone with an integral high-capacity USB pendrive. I don't care if it has a camera or colour or MP3 or any of those things, as long as it's big and solid and robust and fast and easy to use, small enough to fit easily into a pocket and runs for ages on its standard battery.

Neither is hard to do. The technology is here today and quite widespread. But nothing like either exists.

Why not?

For the PDA:

I want a C21 Psion 5mx: something like a Nokia N800 Internet Tablet, but in the form factor of the Psion, and additionally with the same range of apps as the Psion and a keyboard as good as the Psion's.

Wait for the Nokia E90.

I want a Nokia 6310i, with 3G and Wifi, plus a bigger higher-res screen, more flexible UI, more customisability and masses of memory, which can seamlessly sync to any kind of computer - Windows, Mac, Linux, whatever - via USB2 or wirelessly. It should, in essence, be a phone with an integral high-capacity USB pendrive

Nokia E60.

The Communicators were not a patch for the Psions in terms of ease of use, flexibility or power. No touchscreen, /lousy/ keyboard, tiny, cramped design constrained by the phone form factor and a smaller, lower-resolution screen. I've not yet seen an E90 - it's not out yet - but of these, the only one that I know it fixes is the screen res.

I've only had a 2min play with an E60. It's a nice little device, but its keypad and joystick-based navigation method is, for my money, considerably inferior to that of the old 6310. I also find S60 more awkward to navigate than old dumb Nokia phones. But yes, it is indeed close!

Yea and what can the iPhone bring to the market that Symbian or any other Mobile OS doesnt have yet? Seriously, i wrote it already ( http://blog.2blocksaway.com/2007/01/11/the-iphone-why-it-is-and-wil... ) and I stand by this, Apple is too late, at least with this model of the iPhone and the specs of it. It looks cool but what else? The new S60 3rd edition has the rotating icons as well, so what?

classy, ease of use, itunes, mac osx, incredible screen (166 dpi), 8GB, touch screen, no fixed keyboard, videos, wide screen, from apple. Need anything else?

edit: do you really think that the nokia can compete on all fronts with the iPhone?

Edited 2007-01-10 22:18

Even if it manages to compete against other smartphones, the fact of the matter is that the market for smartphones is really just a niche. And it's no wonder: $499 is a lot of money to pay for a phone. Apple is counting on people who would otherwise be thinking about buying a separate iPod and phone to purchase the iPhone as a unification device. Since the device isn't available publicly, it's tough to tell how much value it adds over separate iPod and phone devices. It has been my experience that so-called "convergence devices" tend to be lesser cousins of the devices that they sought to replace; that is, apprentices of many devices and masters of none. Apple does have a good track record on industrial design; however, Apple isn't immune to the realities of hardware tradeoffs. Economies of scale can only be stretched so far. Time will tell, though. I wouldn't bet against Apple's success, but "success" miht be pretty underwhelming if the reach is relatively small, compared to the larger market for phones.

>classy

I'd say, looks like a toy.

>ease of use

S60 is very easy to use.

>itunes

That monstrous piece of software paired with DRM infected music store? Thanks, no.

>incredible screen

480x320? Nokia 7710/Communicators have had 640x320 displays for years, upcoming E90 will feature 800x352.

>8GB

There are already 8Gb smartphones on the market, Nokia N91 for instance.

>edit: do you really think that the nokia can compete on all fronts with the iPhone?

Apple should try to compete with Nokia, not vice versa. Currently, with that expensive iPhone gadget they hardly can.

Edited 2007-01-10 22:36

that incredible screen won't look so incredible once it gets smudged and scratched from touching it all the time. And macos x is pointless if there won't be any apps available. iPhone will be closed like a danger sidekick

i just read your blog! wow.... dont you love the internet! now we all can be armchair know it all.....yea!!!!


look.... in know these iPhone got all your panties in an uproar! but seriously..... your way of life is not threatened!!!! i guarantee that! please... by all means... continue using your nokia, or your treo, or your winphone! i mean, those phones seem to have the spec that the iPhone does not! so obviously.... the iPhone cant be as good... right? so just press on.... have fun!


BUT.... down the road a bit.... say 2....3...4 years... when the iphone and its siblings have captured HUGE market share while the competition seamingly has better specs..... just remember to admit that you were a wee bit short sided... and may have been a bit to emotionaly involved with the anti apple crowd!

5 years ago.... about 42,455 (approx) experts out there said... "the iPod is a failure.....mark our words.... it will suffer the same fate as the mac..."

we all know haw it really turned out!

damn i love the sound of a toilet flushing!!!!!!!

The problem , or the advantage that the iPod had was that at the time it came, there were a lot of mp3 players, all with their own niche and none with the iTunes ease of use. Plus the player was simplistic and nice. stylish. the iPhone is entering in a market that is saturated, there are WELL established entities. I think your analogy should be with Zune and microsoft.

Must... resist... fanboy-gadget-troll...

Well, as someone getting that upset from a simple blogg comparing two devices you should back off. Most of us dont care a bit how many iPods Apple have sold or what the experts predict in terms of market shares and profits, but evaluate these sort of devices personally on the basis of functionality and durability. Bringing a new gadget to the market, don't make the old ones perform *worse*. Are you suggesting the Nokia or the Treo would suddenly turn into unusable crap overnight for someone who's comfortable using them when the iPhone is released? Get a life.

My Palm T|X is just as semi-functional/crappy now as it was a year ago, regardless where the competition is these days. At least it was cheap :-)

What it brings is ease of use, ease of sync and a multitouch, finger-driven GUI. But mostly, it's about the UI.

Existing phones' UIs all suck. Apple is the world leader in UI design. Result: $$$$!

I am honestly amazed to read that. I've played with several models of Blackberry. Written all over them is the fact that they're American and Americans don't really understand cellphones, because they never took off over there the way they did in the rest of the world. (Because of the USA's broken mess of multiple incompatible competing mobile phone networks.)

The Blackberry is a pager on steroids. Its UI sucks even worse than most, it has a mad, near-unusable keyboard and it doesn't do much. (If you think it's usable pocket QWERTY, do yourself a favour, go play with a Psion 5 or Revo sometime. Prepare to be amazed. If you think you need QWERTY to enter text quickly, watch a Eurasian teen using T9 predictive text input at 40-50wpm without trying and better than twice that if they're good and putting some effort in. Prepare to be amazed again.)

I am honestly amazed to read that. I've played with several models of Blackberry. Written all over them is the fact that they're American and Americans don't really understand cellphones, because they never took off over there the way they did in the rest of the world. (Because of the USA's broken mess of multiple incompatible competing mobile phone networks.)

Er, Blackberry is made by Research in Motion, which is a Canadian company. We haven't *quite* become the 51st state. Yet, anyways.

The Blackberry is a pager on steroids. Its UI sucks even worse than most, it has a mad, near-unusable keyboard and it doesn't do much. (If you think it's usable pocket QWERTY, do yourself a favour, go play with a Psion 5 or Revo sometime. Prepare to be amazed. If you think you need QWERTY to enter text quickly, watch a Eurasian teen using T9 predictive text input at 40-50wpm without trying and better than twice that if they're good and putting some effort in. Prepare to be amazed again.)

The blackberry was not designed to be a cell phone originally. It's purpose originally was to be a two-way real-time messaging device; that was, is and always will be it's raison d'etre. In fact the blackberry was to the paging/messaging market what the iPod was to the mp3 player market. Phone functionality was an after-thought but eventually became an integrated part of the design. Sort of like plugging a gsm chip into an stylish MP3 player.

Teens may be fine with it, but convincing an executive to use predictive typing on a numeric pad simply is not going to happen.

Personally I'm not a fan of the blackberry, but my gf is married to hers. The interface is less than perfect (although the scroll wheel is something I got used to pretty quickly) and it's not entirely intuitive to use. But it simply cannot be touched as a messaging device; there are alternatives, I've tried some of them, but blackberry still cannot be touched.

And that's what it boils down to; people don't really buy blackberries to play music or watch videos.

Canadian: eep! All right, fair call, my bad. Apologies.

Not designed to be a phone: yes, I know, that's why I called it a "pager on steroids". Pagers pretty much disappeared in Europe in the early 1990s. I couldn't believe how long they stuck around in the US.

I'll agree regarding their messaging abilities, though.

As for texting via keypad: I think you'd be surprised. Even my 70-year-old technophobic mum is happily texting now. She can't get her head around email or the Web or computers in general, but texting she's mastered. No, she doesn't use predictive text - few people over 40 I know do - but almost everyone I know in their mid-30s or below are fast, competent predictive texters. It is ubiquitous now; people I know who despise mobile phones and never speak on them carry one around to text with.

The Pearl is completely unlike the huge qwerty Blackberries you are thinking about. Look it up. I would never dream of carrying around one of those huge things that are the size of a slice of toast. The Treo was too big for me, that's partly why I ditched it. The Pearl is about the size of a Moto SLVR, maybe a bit smaller. A Psion 5 is gargantuan in comparison, and hardly pocketable.

The Pearl has Suretype, which is the midpoint between qwerty and T9. 2 letters per key, in a qwerty layout. The predictive software is really good, way better than T9. Like T9, you just have to not look at the screen and trust that it figures out what you want to type, which I find works about 98% of the time.

By the way, I'm not American, so I know exactly what you mean.

No, it isn't, and I've not only tried one, I've helped a friend looking at smartphones to decide to buy one. I stand by all my comments about Blackberries; they were written with the Pearl very much in mind, and I was just waiting for someone to point out how different they were. They're not, very. The text input system is clever, but it's no Tengo!

Fair enough, and I do see your point. But I think the difference between you and me is of how we define "pocket". I would hardly call a Psion a "pocket" device. It's more of something you would carry in a backpack or a man-purse. A Psion or a Nokia 7710 is unacceptably big for me. I want to carry my phone in my pocket and forget it's there. I understand that I'm going to make some compromises as far as text entry.

If you think the Blackberry keyboard is useless, you should sit in any public bus or train in a major American city and watch those business executive types type out their emails at 50 wpm like a European teen on ecstasy. That goes for both the big qwerty Blackberries as well as the smaller Suretype ones. I could never get too fast on the Treo: the keys were too small and I kept hitting 2 or 3 at the same time. I'm sure I would type at near my full size keyboard speed on a Psion-like device, but then I wouldn't be able to carry the thing like it was a phone.

By the way, thanks for pointing out Tengo. I hadn't heard of it. It does look clever, but at 5 letters per "key" vs. 3 for T9 and 2 for Suretype, wouldn't the word prediction accuracy suffer?

Not played with a 680 yet, I confess, but I have tried the 650 and 600.

Good at what they are, but I'm sorry, nearly 10y ago, I was using a PDA with full preemptive multitasking, a 640x240 greyscale touchscreen and a pocket-sized QWERTY keyboard that I could do near-touchtyping speeds on with only hours of familiarity.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psion_5

Launched 1997.

Fast, stable, ultralong battery life, about 100% reliable - by far the most reliable GUI computer I've ever used - user-programmable and with a big 3rd-party aftermarket of hardware and software.

Any and all Palm devices seem like a *big* step backwards once you've had all that.

I moved to crackberry because I didn't think the 700p or the 680 were enough of a step forward from the 650 to justify getting them. I love my 650, it has served me well, but it was time to move on.

The Blackberry OS is not as elegant, UI wise, but is considerably more stable. Add to that multitasking that actually works, unlike Windows Mobile.

Curiously, what I couldn't give up was Palm Desktop. Believe it or not I sync my BB with Palm Desktop.

the Symbian phone is a smartphone, the WinMob is a dirty bi+ch phone and the iPhone is a dumb blond phone.