[m a d r a]

i'm in the market for a new mobile phone at the minute, but apart from a vague list on apple's website of mac OSX compatible handsets, i cannae seem to find much in the way of unbiased opinion as to which phones are the most mac friendly.

anyone care to comment on the good, the bad and the ugly - as regards whatever mobile phones you've used with your mac. i'm after something along the following lines:

1. just yer basic phone. being an old-fashioned traditionalist, i tend to use my phone to ring people and send texts. i'm not bothered about built in radios, televisions, toasters, 3D video cameras, electron microscopes, quadrophonic ringtones, lara croft games or whatever else junk they stick on to impress the kids these days.

2. mac friendly - ie. sommit which will painlessly integrate with my mac, whether that be for browsing the web from my laptop in the middle of a forest in donegal, or syncing my phone's phonebook with mac osx's address book.

3. mac-ish operating system. OK i know this shouldn't really matter, but one of my personal bugbears is how crappy and irritating most mobile phone OSes are. after all, i use a mac, coz i dinnae want to wrestle wi windoze, so why should i have to put up with a microsoft-esque experience while navigating my phone. i've always found nokias to be the most logical phones OS-wise [i can't make head nor tail of my GF's ericsson!] - but that's probably a pretty subjective viewpoint. i'm open to suggestions if you've found another manufacturer's phone OS to be particularly mac-like.

4. build quality - again this comes back to the 'why i use macs' thing. i just like things that are well made. i was toying with the idea of a nokia 8910 [you can pick them up on ebay for about £100-£120] as it's a basic no frills phone in a titanium cover [now that would go lovely wi a tibook!] but the reviews i've read suggest it's not much of a phone, more of an over-priced fashion accessory - 'all titanium coat and no knickers' - to coin a phrase. are there any other phones out there which seem built to last more that ten minutes, but maybe offer more internally than the 8910?

any comments would be much appreciated.


thanx!

[Timo]

It's probably too much "and the kitchen sink" for you, but I like my Nokia 6600. Synch's with bluetooth, arrrr.

[art_director]

i use the sony ericsson p900. it boasts more bells and whistles than you wish but it's a darn smart device and it syncs with a mac via bluetooth.

[maxintosh]

Z600, K700, or T630. All Sony Ericsson phones, but that's because Nokia doesn't make any compact/non-smartphones that work with iSync. The K700 is probably a little more than you're looking for--it has an MP3 player and megapixel camera built in. But I had a Z600 and absolutely loved it. The T630 is its candy-bar equivelant.

As for the user interface, it's a little different than Nokia at first but you learn it very fast. It's convenient, too. A dedicated "back" button takes you to the previous screen, and most screens have an option called "More" which brings up a sort of contextual-menu for the item that is selected. Also the grid layout system makes it much easier to navigate quickly.

[-Q-]

The T630 (as mentioned above) has been a champ. Prior to that, I had a T68i that was a great phone, if a little sketchy occasionally on the reception. But the T630 has synced flawlessly with my PowerBook and desktop. File browsing is easy using the Bluetooth File Exchange utility. Other third party apps extend the capabilities even more.

And I've found the OS to be good overall. As with anything, there are some things I'd change about it (seems to want to incessantly update my 'local time zone') but overall it's a good phone.

[maxintosh]

Originally posted by -Q-:
And I've found the OS to be good overall. As with anything, there are some things I'd change about it (seems to want to incessantly update my 'local time zone') but overall it's a good phone.

You can turn that off. Go to Settings -> Date and Time -> Advanced -> Auto Time Zone -> Off if I remember correctly.

[Krypton]

Sony Ericsson phones work great with OS X - mines a T610.

[rambo47]

Another vote here for the Sony-Ericsson T610. Bluetooth works flawlessly with iSync on my 12" G4 PowerBook, plus the hands free headset is awesome. It has a real basic camera, not great resolution but good enough to snap a pic of a car or bike that grabs your fancy. With TriBand capability (GSM 1900, 1800, and 900) you're good to go in Europe as well as North America. Overall it's an extremely reliable and easy to use phone.

[wschultz]

I just got the T637, which is an update of the T616 for ATT, and it matched right up to my BT iBook All contacts synced perfectly, no issues. I was concerned at first cuz the 637 isn't mentioned on the Apple website - but since its brand new I figured since the 616 worked so would this one
Oh, it looks cool too - all black w/ nice keys.