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vsurfer · Apr 8, 2005, 11:07 PM

Ok lets have your recommendations, whats' the best-connected multi-function or do-all cell phone for mac?

I lost my old cellie, so it's time to upgrade -- contacts, security, messaging, range, value, best plan etc etc

Link · Apr 8, 2005, 11:45 PM

I'm in much the same situation, except with a tighter stunt to pull -- I don't use more than 300 minutes a month usually, and want to keep to a $30 a month plan, the $39 ones with taxes are almost $50!

I might just go and grab a T6something.. but I'd really just rather get a nice clamshell, and unfortunately at best either I'll get a janky phone or have to fork up $100 for a v600

DigitalEl · Apr 9, 2005, 04:34 PM

Personally, I'm holding out for the Motorola SLVR 8, which is promised by the third quarter of this year.

The beauty (new hotness) of the RAZR, in sleek candy bar form. Me can'ts stands no flip-phones. </popeye voice>

I'm out from under the 1 year contract thumb of T-Mobile in August, so the timing should be perfect. And hell, maybe something even better will come out by then.

driven · Apr 9, 2005, 05:41 PM

I've got a Treo 650 ... I love it.
(Even though I miss the flip-phone format)

TailsToo · Apr 9, 2005, 07:04 PM

Originally posted by driven:
I've got a Treo 650 ... I love it.
(Even though I miss the flip-phone format)

Treo here too, it's great! I just wish that it had the same bluetooth functionality as my old SE T610 had.

driven · Apr 9, 2005, 09:40 PM

Originally posted by TailsToo:
Treo here too, it's great! I just wish that it had the same bluetooth functionality as my old SE T610 had.

The Treo 650 *does* have bluetooth! (It's one of the new features!)

Link · Apr 9, 2005, 09:47 PM

Treo 650s are nice, at 4x the cost of other phones

driven · Apr 9, 2005, 09:56 PM

Originally posted by Link:
Treo 650s are nice, at 4x the cost of other phones

Or .. just a little bit more than a full featured PDA.

So look at it this way: Buy a PDA and get the phone as a bonus.
(I needed a PDA regardless, so this was my justification.)

Link · Apr 9, 2005, 11:52 PM

But a tungsten costs like $200 right? You might be closer to the price of a good phone and a PDA, but that's still meh.

driven · Apr 10, 2005, 12:17 AM

Originally posted by Link:
But a tungsten costs like $200 right? You might be closer to the price of a good phone and a PDA, but that's still meh.

Tungsten T5 is $399 - $499 depending where you buy it.

Link · Apr 10, 2005, 12:49 AM

$350 off newegg, Admittedly a 650 off of amazon (for cingular) is 319, but an unlocked one is something like $500 or 600

I wonder if the cingular ones themselves are locked o_O and whether or not..

A 600 from tmobile is 299 -- besides the blue (which is very nice, mind you) - why is a 650 better?

driven · Apr 10, 2005, 12:53 AM

Originally posted by Link:
$350 off newegg, Admittedly a 650 off of amazon (for cingular) is 319, but an unlocked one is something like $500 or 600

I wonder if the cingular ones themselves are locked o_O and whether or not..

A 600 from tmobile is 299 -- besides the blue (which is very nice, mind you) - why is a 650 better?

The 650 has so many more new features that it's in a different class than the 600.

Here are the big highlights:
- High-res screen (4X the resolution of the 600)
- NV RAM (no losing work when the battery dies)
- Bluetooth
- Faster processor

It's really an amazing device. The screen alone would have sold it for me. (It makes the 600 look like a "lite-brite" by comparison.

Link · Apr 10, 2005, 01:20 AM

Wow, in that case the 600 totally isn't worth it,and TM doesn't have the 650 *sigh*

They dont' have the razr either *sighs more*

I seriously am probably just going to get the v600

I want to get a PB and it'd go perfectly for a bluetooth 'modem' heh, plus they have the cheapest internet by far ($10 a month unlimited if you only use port 80, and I can always make my own proxy from my g4.. heh)

Having said that, it'd rawk to have a t650 for when I'm bored, but in half those situations I'll be able to use the PB too.. and likely have it with me! Oh well.

amazing · Apr 10, 2005, 11:59 AM

Well, does anyone remember the old Mae West line, "Are you just glad to see me, or is that a Treo in your pocket?"

Best way to shop for a cellphone is to choose the carrier and plan first, then find what phone suits you best. For example, Cingular now has rollover minutes, where your unused minutes rollover to the next month (provided you have any.) Don't bother to choose a plan based on their customer service record, because all carriers are equally lousy on that basis. Though you could argue that some are more lousy than the atrociously lousy norm.

Once you've decided on a carrier, you consult your wallet and your budget, and go shopping at buy.com or amazon.com for phones with the features you want, like bluetooth. Then you go look at the forums to see which phones don't work with iSync, whereupon you decide to wait to see if your favorite unsupported phone will somehow miraculously be supported in Tiger. So, maybe you end up waiting for Tiger?

driven · Apr 10, 2005, 12:05 PM

I left Verizon after many years and went with Sprint simply because of two things:

1) Data plan cost ... $15 per month unlimited. Cingular was $39 ... Verizon quoted me $80. (gasp) <-- This is additional on top of your voice minutes.

2) Fair & Flexible plan ... Rather than gag you for .45 per minute if you go over your max plan minutes, Sprint charges me $5 for an extra 100 minutes if I go over. That's quite reasonable.

georgeacrump · Apr 10, 2005, 03:28 PM

I use one of the new Blackberry's. With the new Enterprise 4.0 software you don't need to sync ever. Everything is done wireless. As far as applications on the MAC I use iCal with Snerdwares GroupCal. That auto-sync's my iCal events and tasks between my mac and exchange. Snerdware's similar product for syncing address book to exchange.

Worst case you can use Outlook web, which in the 2003 version is pretty good.

The only think I am lacking is a way to sync notes between my Mac and Exchange. Right now I just use the notes fields in Tasks for that.

TailsToo · Apr 10, 2005, 08:36 PM

Originally posted by driven:
The Treo 650 *does* have bluetooth! (It's one of the new features!)

It doesn't interact with the Mac the way that the SonyEricsson did. I could send SMS messages from my Mac through the phone, have the addressbook pull up a caller's card, etc. The Treo will not do any of these things.

waffffffle · Apr 11, 2005, 12:01 AM

Originally posted by TailsToo:
It doesn't interact with the Mac the way that the SonyEricsson did. I could send SMS messages from my Mac through the phone, have the addressbook pull up a caller's card, etc. The Treo will not do any of these things.

Really? I have a T637 now (previously T610) and I am hoping to get a Treo 650 from work. I love these features and I would be pretty annoyed if I couldn't do all this stuff.

Do you have the Treo 650 on Cingular?

JHromadka · Apr 11, 2005, 12:34 AM

If you're a T-Mobile user (like me), you can just buy an unlocked GSM Treo 650. Costs more but you can use it if you ever change to Cingular or travel internationally.

If you don't want a PDA phone but want one that works well with the Mac, my weekend phone is the Sony Ericsson K700. It has Bluetooth, is small, and works great with iSync.

driven · Apr 11, 2005, 02:00 AM

Originally posted by TailsToo:
It doesn't interact with the Mac the way that the SonyEricsson did. I could send SMS messages from my Mac through the phone, have the addressbook pull up a caller's card, etc. The Treo will not do any of these things.

Those are REALLY cool features. Please realize though that they really have nothing to do with bluetooth.

They are however really neat ....

Diggory Laycock · Apr 11, 2005, 08:47 AM

SonyEricsson p910

JHromadka · Apr 11, 2005, 09:57 AM

Originally posted by driven:
Those are REALLY cool features. Please realize though that they really have nothing to do with bluetooth.

They are however really neat ....

Well, actually they do. The Treo 650 doesn't support Address Book's Bluetooth connectivity, so you can't send/receive sms messages through the Treo using your Mac. You can use Dialup Networking (DUN), but you have to enable that on the Treo before pairing so your Mac will recognize that option.

Because of the Treo's nice chat-style texting, I don't really miss the feature much.

driven · Apr 11, 2005, 03:46 PM

Originally posted by JHromadka:
Well, actually they do. The Treo 650 doesn't support Address Book's Bluetooth connectivity, so you can't send/receive sms messages through the Treo using your Mac. You can use Dialup Networking (DUN), but you have to enable that on the Treo before pairing so your Mac will recognize that option.

Because of the Treo's nice chat-style texting, I don't really miss the feature much.

That is a software program that uses the bluetooth infrastructure for communication. It's not a bluetooth feature per se. The right software on the treo could make that happen.

And yes, the chat style texting is awesome.

Link · Apr 11, 2005, 06:05 PM

You mean the T650 uses that sync method that OS 10.4 will support but 10.3 doesn't? :]

driven · Apr 11, 2005, 06:10 PM

Originally posted by Link:
You mean the T650 uses that sync method that OS 10.4 will support but 10.3 doesn't? :]

??????

blackstar · Apr 13, 2005, 01:02 PM

i have a t610 at the moment but am looking for a treo, could it happen that treo will be supported for adress book texting and calling in the future?

Link · Apr 13, 2005, 02:56 PM

If I'm not mistaken, certain phones use a sync method not supported in OS X -- well in 10.3 at least, 10.4 has support for syncML (I think it's called) -- would that be the feature that the treo 650 uses for syncing?

blackstar · Apr 13, 2005, 03:29 PM

anybody has experience with the new SE S710a, looks just fantastic!!!!

MisterRogers · Apr 13, 2005, 03:29 PM

Gotta chime in also with the SE P910a. I had a P800 for quite awhile, switched to a HP6315 quad band PDA phone, and went back to SE with the 910a. It's awesome! Little more phone than PDA; which I decided I prefer. Doesn't have WiFi like the 6315, but I never go anywhere (practically) without my PB17 (Computer Consultant/Programmer), so I would always use the laptop. The BT stack on the SE phones is the best in the biz. It works fantasically with Tiger (iSync actually downloads a symbian app to intelligently manage syncing on the phone side - oops! probably shouldn't have said that, oh well, Tiger outta the cage anyway).

Right size, great screen, keypad, servicable pda tools, and the best part about it - SE finally got the radio right on this thing. Absolutely best sound quality of any phone I've used (you probably can tell I go through the latest gadgets). Signal strength with the 910a is better than any other phone I've owned.

Anyway, not cheap, but in my opinion, the best smart phone

Mr.

blackstar · Apr 13, 2005, 03:50 PM

anybody who would dare to compare the tre 650 and the SE P910a???

amazing · Apr 13, 2005, 04:39 PM

Originally posted by MisterRogers:
The BT stack on the SE phones is the best in the biz. It works fantasically with Tiger (iSync actually downloads a symbian app to intelligently manage syncing on the phone side - oops! probably shouldn't have said that, oh well, Tiger outta the cage anyway).

Are you perhaps saying that more mobile models can be used with iSync under Tiger? That would definitely get me excited if my Nokia 6230 was covered!

MisterRogers · Apr 13, 2005, 04:42 PM

Well no, I really can't say for sure, though I believe I read somewhere that MLSync is supported under Tiger, as well as an increased amount of devices. We should see some info on this soon.

Diggory Laycock · Apr 13, 2005, 06:08 PM

Originally posted by MisterRogers:
(iSync actually downloads a symbian app to intelligently manage syncing on the phone side - oops! probably shouldn't have said that, oh well, Tiger outta the cage anyway).

Really? That rocks!

hmm - I wonder if it does that for series 60 as well....

vsurfer · Jan 9, 2007, 11:58 PM

I ended up sticking with my old Virgin Mobile 'till they stopped making battery chargers for it.
These phones looked good, but at $20 a month, the Virgin was cheap to feed.

I figure with the money I saved, I can maybe afford the phone I've been waiting for for so long.

Ya for IPhone.

But it looks like it's gonna be a few more months wait.

IceEnclosure · Jan 10, 2007, 01:26 AM

boy, thanks for the update. I was extra concerned.