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His Dudeness · Apr 29, 2004, 08:22 AM

How many people use these phones with their Macs? Right now I'm with Sprint pcs and hate them. I want to buy one of the Sony Ericsson's off eBay and then go with T-Mobile. I don't want one with a camera on. That's a gimmick if I ever saw one. What I do want is a big color screen, bluetooth, and great PDA capabilities. I'm seeing this P-800 out there. Is that a decent one?

Thanks for the advice!

f1000 · Apr 29, 2004, 08:29 AM

I use a t68i with my PowerBook. The phone works well, but it has a poor user interface.

I eagerly await an EDGE version.

His Dudeness · Apr 29, 2004, 08:57 AM

EDGE? What's that?

f1000 · Apr 29, 2004, 09:02 AM

http://www.infosyncworld.com/news/n/4327.html

-Q- · Apr 29, 2004, 09:57 AM

Like f1000, I also use a T68i with my powerbook and my desktop. It works flawlessly.

And there's nothing more cool than using your phone to remotely control iTunes or Keynote when giving a presentation.

Socially Awkward Solo · Apr 29, 2004, 10:03 AM

The P900 is even better. Oh, and it has a camera.

His Dudeness · Apr 29, 2004, 11:56 AM

I don't want a camera anyway. Is the P900 and P800 basically the same as a Palm Pilot or something? I tried to find one at the mall yesterday that actually worked so I could play with and didn't find one...

maxintosh · Apr 29, 2004, 12:47 PM

Originally posted by His Dudeness:
I don't want a camera anyway. Is the P900 and P800 basically the same as a Palm Pilot or something? I tried to find one at the mall yesterday that actually worked so I could play with and didn't find one...

Yes, they're "Smartphones." They don't run on Palm OS, but Symbian 7/UIQ which has some decent apps for it and is overall quite stable.

imikeDotMac · Apr 29, 2004, 02:43 PM

I bought the T616 in December and while it's my only phone (say no to the land line) I barely use it with my PowerBook, even though I bought it specifically for that purpose. It's an expensive phone if you don't use it's features, so get it when it becomes available as a give-away, unless you can use all the features. The same would go for the P800. I recently saw a teenager on the subway playing with a new P800 (right out of the box)�I don't recall being able to afford something that nice when I was a teenage!
I've only done one presentation using my phone and Salling Clicker (and yes, it was impressive), but other then that, I haven't used the bluetooth features much, such as intergrating calls into Address Book. Then again, I hardly ever get phone calls.

druber · Apr 29, 2004, 03:50 PM

I waved a great, sobbing goodbye to my landline about a year ago (great until you lose your phone. I blame pockets) and just recently bought a T616, free after rebate. Bluetooth adapter, $40, 5 minutes later I've synced iCal and my Address Book with the phone. Haven't entered a single address on the phone. Much nicer to type it in.

Getting the settings all straight to use the phone as a tether to the internet are a bit of a hassle. But it works, I'm writing from my iBook right now. Definitely wish it had EDGE. Browsing with images on is always a crawl. And the way data comes in bursts is odd, too. Just takes some getting used to. Cingular man, I like it.

Salling Clicker is cooler than pay dirt. Haven't used it much, but that's because of how the home stereo is set up. This may be my workaround for buying a networked audio player. But maybe not.

normr · May 1, 2004, 02:57 PM

I haven't seen that it works with Macs, can you point me to the site if it does.

druber · May 1, 2004, 04:12 PM

You haven't seen that -what- works with Macs?

Parky · May 2, 2004, 05:39 AM

I have a P800 and I like the phone a great deal, it is big though and that is getting to be a pain, somehow being big makes it easier to damage.

I also have a problem using it with my mac via Bluetooth.

Every time I want to use iSync it fails, unless I delete the phone - iMac pairing and then re-pair the device.

No idea why this is though, I have tried fixing it, but it is always the same needing a re-pair.

orbital~debris · May 2, 2004, 12:17 PM

I use a Sony Ericsson T630 with my G3 iMac.

The phone itself is cool, very easy to use and fairly nice interface. The operating system reminds me of early Nokias, and seems like an evolution of the original Nokia interfaces.

I've synced it via Bluetooth - it's cool to just let iSync do its stuff, and then all your contact details are there on the phone.

Didn't pay anything for the phone - here in England the phone shops basically work on the premise of getting you locked into a 12-month contract, heavily subsidising the handset prices in order to do so.

The phone didn't seem to connect with Address Book for stuff like initiating calls and seeing who was calling from the Mac, so i did a little research and discovered that i needed to add 1 line of text to a config file to get the T630 to be recognised. It works well now, and it's really good to be able to text people from my Apple keyboard (even quicker than T9 predictive character input!). The only problem with using Address Book is that it doesn't seem to support Long SMS (text) messages, so you can only do 160 character SMS via Address Book.

Apart from that, the Sony Ericsson seems to work harmoniously with my Mac, and I've not even explored extra capabilities with software like 'Salling Clicker' yet...

Oh and my girlfriend has got the same phone, and despite not yet being fully wise in the ways-of-the-Mac, and she likes it too. She now wants her own Mac to go with it

DaedalusDX · May 2, 2004, 01:00 PM

I've got the Sony Ericsson Z600... Basically a T610 or T630 but in a flip phone formfactor.

http://www.mobileburn.com/review.jsp?Id=492

Its bigger than the other candy-bar phones because its a flip phone, but so far its been extremely reliable, and the neat feature of answer on open is great. Also, no accidental dialing from just having it in my pocket and no need to lock the keypad ever.

Its a somewhat rare phone. I'm the only one I know who has one, and among Mac users, I think its just me and Jonathan Ive. :-D http://www.trebes.com/applesf/opening/index.html

Scroll to about 1:10. The camera catches him chatting away on a blue cell phone that I instantly recognized.

Oh, and pretty much any of the new age Sony Ericsson phones will work beautifully with Mac OS X if you've got a bluetooth adapter. I use Salling Clicker and also with the Mac OS X Address book and iSync. Convergence is grand.

Casper Crane · May 2, 2004, 05:27 PM

if you are switching to T-Mobile anyway, why would you buy a phone off eBay?

Buy it at Amazon, and get money back. They practically pay you to switch services, so don't miss out!

well, this was -$50 last week. wait another week and it will probably go back. i've seen it as cheap as -$150 after rebates.

T610 on Amazon

Fillman · May 2, 2004, 11:16 PM

Originally posted by Parky:
I have a P800 and I like the phone a great deal, it is big though and that is getting to be a pain, somehow being big makes it easier to damage.

I also have a problem using it with my mac via Bluetooth.

Every time I want to use iSync it fails, unless I delete the phone - iMac pairing and then re-pair the device.

No idea why this is though, I have tried fixing it, but it is always the same needing a re-pair.

I use my P800 all the time and really like the synchronisation with my PB12" using iSync. I ALWAYS fire up address book and click the pairing link before using iSync. This garauntees a succesful synchronisation.

I have found that the contact limit is somewhere just over 1000 names on the P800. I had to trash some of my older contacts recently.