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Hardware

Nokia 3650 Released in US Market 344

Posted by CmdrTaco from the get-your-lust-on dept.
A Swing Dancing Dork writes "Check out the new Nokia 3650! Video and still imaging, MMS support,Bluetooth,Triband, and polyphonic bliss all wraped up in a uber-modern package." I was looking phones all morning so I'm glad this showed up. Anyone have advice on cel phones? I'd like IMAP, HTTP, and IM, as well as PDA functionality that can sync via bluetooth to a Mac. I was looking at the Sony Ericsons, but this may work as well.
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Nokia 3650 Released in US Market More

Nokia 3650 Released in US Market

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  • T-Mobile's Sidekick (Score:5, Informative)

    by ChaoticChaos ( 603248 ) <l3sr-v4cf@spame[ ]om ['x.c' in gap]> on Thursday April 17, 2003 @04:18PM (#5754602)
    Two words - T-Mobile's Sidekick. Color units are coming in a month or two. Has SMS, full HTML web browsing (not WAP!), POP3 email, AIM messaging, scheduler, notes, games, hidden keyboard! GSM/GPRS device. Uber c00l!

    All of your data is fully backed up to Danger's servers so there is never a chance of losing anything. Unbeatable deal for less than $100 with unlimited data for $39.95 a month.

    No IMAP or syncing via Bluetooth though.

    • And is it still a cell phone, too?
    • i like using my phone to make calls. Oh, and the occasional game of snake. Guess I'm not much of an uber-geek.

    • Unbeatable deal for less than $100 with unlimited data I get unlimited internet with a $10 a month add on fee with my voice plan from sprint. Fair warning though, I understand that sprint's service reps are pains to work with, luckily I havn't had to find out.

    • Re:T-Mobile's Sidekick (Score:5, Informative)

      by steelerguy ( 172075 ) on Thursday April 17, 2003 @04:53PM (#5754925) Homepage
      So here is my quick review of it.

      It can be annoying as hell to talk on until you get used to it. Most phones have a natural sweet spot that just feels right when you hold it to you head. The screen of the Sidekick gets pressed on your check while the ear piece is not so close to your ear. Once you get used to it is not a big deal. Also, pressing that phone up to your greasy ass cheek gets smudges on it.

      Not a great PDA but if you use your PDA for what a lot of people do, as an address book and appointment book, it will do just fine.

      The ring tones are gay. People will all look when it rings to see who the ass is. Then they think you are crazy when you press a 'Gameboy' to you head and start talking. Once they see you get off the phone, flip the screen, and start browsing the web or checking email they think it is the most kick ass thing they have seen.

      It is better than any phone at browing the web. You actually get decent pictues and number of lines per page. Some site are designed kind of weird though and you have to scroll. Also not so good for site that use a lot of cookies to store data, but then no phones are good at that.

      Games are lame, but sometimes you get desperate.

      Email is great. If you get a web based account with pop access you are pretty much set for home and while on the road.

      Wish they have more than just AIM but it works pretty good. Just have to convince your friends they need AIM accounts and to stay logged into them.

      Some people have said it feels cheap. Well compared to the Motorola Pagewriter is does a little bit. But I had a lot more problems with the Pagewriter and it was not a phone nor did it have games. It does not feel any cheaper than most lightweight mobile phones.

      The design is great. The flip screen that hides the keyboard when not in use works perfectly. The only bad part is if you have to dial a number not in your address book you have to flip the screen, dial, then flip back..well I suppose you could leave the screen out but that would just be weird.

      It lacks good syncing. Kind of scary, if you store a lot on it, but I hear they are working on it. I would also wait for color if it is going ot be out soon, although their greyscale is pretty damn good.

    • The Sidekick has IMAP support (Score:5, Informative)

      by Wonko42 ( 29194 ) <(ryan+slashdot) (at) (wonko.com)> on Thursday April 17, 2003 @05:07PM (#5755021) Homepage
      The Sidekick does have IMAP support. It even supports SSL connections over both IMAP and POP3. The only drawback is that it doesn't support server-side IMAP folders (i.e., it will connect to the server and download the contents of your inbox, but that's it).

      I love my Sidekick.

    • Why wait for the Sidekick? (Score:3, Interesting)

      by fm6 ( 162816 )
      T-Mobile offers the T68i [sonyericsson.com] now. (For some reason, it's not on the T-Mobile web site, but you can buy it from Amazon [amazon.com]. Yeah, it's only got a five line screen. But I've already got a PDA, I'd rather have my phone separate. Add a bluetooth interface to my Palm M515 [palm.com] and I've got pretty nice wireless web browsing setup.

      The best thing about T-Mobile's data support: it's not a stupid CDMA "cell modem". It's an "always-on" packet protocol, GPRS. Instead of paying for connect time, your pay for the amount of bandwidt

  • Too big (Score:4, Insightful)

    by flxkid ( 171985 ) on Thursday April 17, 2003 @04:19PM (#5754615) Homepage
    I was just about to buy one yesterday but they were just too big. I really wanted a phone with speakerphone and BT, and this seems to be the only one that I can get on T-Mobile or Cingular.

    Went for a T68i instead. It'll have to do for now (atleast it has BT).

    OLIVER
    • I had a T68i via ATT for a week, and returned it for a Motorola T720. the T68i was a great phone in pretty much every way except that its signal strength simply wasn't adequate in lots of places I need to be (Portland airport, San Jose). The T720 works great for me in places where the T68i would cut out constantly. I do miss the Bluetooth, though.

      I looked at the new Nokias, but I just couldn't hack the weird number pad. Yeesh.

    • It's not just a phone.... (Score:4, Informative)

      by gilesjuk ( 604902 ) <giles DOT jones AT zen DOT co DOT uk> on Thursday April 17, 2003 @04:49PM (#5754891)
      It's a smartphone, you made a mistake going with the T68i. The T68i is a toy in comparison, can't install new apps, can't write your own.

      The 3650 can run all kinds of apps, it's basically a modern colour PSION scaled to fit in a phone.

      Who cares if it's a little chunkier than a dumb basic phone, it has more functionality. You might as well say a laptop is too big compared to a PowerPC, this is the difference between a 3650 and a toy like the T68i, only the 3650 is only a little bigger.
    • ...but Nokia's interpretation of BT is spotty. Not all BT headsets are supported since it doesn't support the headset profile, opting to support only Nokia's headset. Otherwise, I think it works fine.

      Is it too big? Somewhat, if you compare it to the T68i. But it's not as heavy as it looks (it's way lighter than my old 7110). But it has a big enough screen for ebooks (mobipocket reader is available), plus there's a gnuboy port for it. An mp3 player isn't included, but 3rd party programs are available.

      Oh pl

  • but... (Score:2, Funny)

    by galacticdruid ( 569137 )
    but can it cook you dinner?
  • IMAP...yeah, ok. HTTP...cool. IM...sure, why not. PDA functionality...interesting.

    POLYPHONIC RING TONES!!!! All right, I'm there baby!

  • I can' t even imagine... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by iocat ( 572367 ) on Thursday April 17, 2003 @04:22PM (#5754639) Homepage Journal
    how irritatating it would be to try and dial that thing, with the buttons not layed out in the traditional, muscle memory configuration. Oh sure, you can use voice recognition, or look up numbers on a list, but even with all that enabled, I still end up *dialing* my phone about 50 - 60% of the time, and trying to deal with that keypad combination would suck, especially with numbers where you can only remember it by dialing it.
    • polyphonic bliss all wraped up in a uber-modern package

      Yeah, but like the parent says, what's up with the dialer? A rotary phone flashback? What's so uber-modern about that?
    • Yes, someone should be fired for that keypad design.

      That alone makes me not want it. Also, duribility comes into question. Can it really take me throwing it across the room in frustration every time I try to dial it until the contract with my wireless carrier is up? I think not!

    • Re:I can' t even imagine... (Score:5, Informative)

      by cpeterso ( 19082 ) on Thursday April 17, 2003 @04:33PM (#5754745) Homepage

      I've used a 3650 for a few months now. The circular "arrow keys" button especially sucks. The button is so sensitive that it often registers the wrong direction when pressed. Very frustrating..
    • You young punks.

      When I was a kid, we had to pulse dial by tapping on the cradle buttons ('cause, you know, they had locks on the rotary dial) and we liked it!
    • I suppose the Nokia people aren't even trying to market to the people who are old enough to have muscle memory of the old traditional dials. In fact, they have probably designed it the other way around so that the cool guy that flashes its new phone around can't be put down by some old timer crack about how things come all the way round and end up in the same place. They surely try to differentiate themselves as much as possible from the old dial phones association, probably. After all, it's not a sure bet
    • the buttons not layed out in the traditional, muscle memory configuration

      I seem to be in the minority here, but I really like the phone. Yes, the buttons are layed out in a "weird" retro-rotary phone fashion, but I've had the phone for 3 days now, and it's not nearly as hard to learn as I thought it would be. My biggest complaint with the keypad is the 4-way scroll key. It's a little too small and sensitive for my fat thumb.

  • Uglly and big phone- hard to use (Score:4, Informative)

    by miradu2000 ( 196048 ) on Thursday April 17, 2003 @04:23PM (#5754641) Homepage
    I saw this device yesterday at the AT&T wireless store in the mall of america. Two word - it sucked. Sure it had a great camera, and big screen - but the buttons felt cheap, the device is huge, and feels realy lcheap in your hands. The 5 way navigator didn't click down very well, and.. you get my point. I think the size of this thing kills it. Sitting right next to it was some uber tiny color nokia that i really liked . It had a much nicer feel to it - nokia has good and bad designs.

    As for a perfect cell phone i would wait for the Sony Ericsson T608 and T610 (CDMA/GPRS respectivly) They are compeltly new phones with the features of the t68i and more. I can't wait for them to be released.

  • Screw Mac's (Score:2, Interesting)

    by rw2 ( 17419 )
    What about something that can sync up with Linux using bluetooth.

    • Well...

      Bluetooth is an open standard, and the SonyEricsson T68i (and a few others) use SyncML [syncml.org], another open standard. So such a phone would be perfectly capable of syncing under Linux, just as soon as someone writes the software.

      OTOH, if you use MacOS X, then this functionallity is already built into iSync.

  • Slightly OT Comment (Score:5, Funny)

    by billstr78 ( 535271 ) on Thursday April 17, 2003 @04:24PM (#5754658) Homepage
    Anybody see the unauthorized realistic but bootleg commercial advertising this phone on the Net? I had a link to it but it has been since taken down by Nokia's Lawyars.

    It depicted a couple of zany guys taking a picture of a cat swinging from a celieng fan with this phone. Had the realistic Nokia logo and everything.

    Rumor had it that the commercial was put together by one of the ad firms in charge of (or denided) Nokia's account and leaked on to the Net from there.

    Definatly one of the most halarious .mpg's I have seen in a while.

  • Sending mine back (Score:4, Informative)

    by LtBurrito ( 267305 ) on Thursday April 17, 2003 @04:25PM (#5754667)
    I just got call tags sent so that I can return mine to ATT. The phone is good. It has good rf performance, better than my T68i. But... It claims to be bluetooth audio, but doesn't work with any bluetooth headset but Nokias. It only works with the bluetooth 'handsfree' profile, not the headset profile that most bluetooth headsets obviously support.

    It does synch over bluetooth with outlook, but the alarm for calendar events is fixed. You can't shut it off without silencing the whole phone (or turning it off). I was awakened at midnight the other night by an alarm for my mom's birthday. I like my mom and all, but that sucks. I want to be able to have just visual alarms for calendar events.

    For $150, it's a nice phone, it just has a few issues. I'll wait for the P800 to be available through ATT. For now, I really do like my old T68i better.
  • One trait I always look for when purchasing phones...can I dial it while driving, and not have to look at the phone? My Motorola T720 certainly meets this criteria... it has large buttons, including a concave "5" button in the center with a small point it its middle.

    This phone on the other hand, with its circular dial pad, can't come close to meeting this criteria. Nokia seems to have been trying to make it more and more difficult to dial their phones using the keypad, and this particular model seems to
  • Disclaimer: I work in the CDMA industry. Not that I am biased or anything. :)

    But my advice holds. Comparing CDMA to GSM is like comparing Linux and Windows. The only advantage of GSM is the installed base.

    Magnus.
    • you got it the other way round man.

      CDMA is like windows, being controlled by one company - Qualcomm

      GSM is an open standard
    • More information from someone *not* in the cell phone industry.

      Current CDMA phones: Crappy battery life, poor reception, blah, blah, blah. Doesn't support data packets. Pluses: CDMA covers almost everywhere you would want to use your cell phone.

      GSM/GPRS: European standard just started getting adopted in the states. Much better battery life and signal quality. Problem, adoption not so big, so the networks look like spider webs. Ex. My parents live in Sacramento and I go to school in Santa Barbara.

    • Re:Buy a CDMA phone instead. (Score:4, Insightful)

      by muonzoo ( 106581 ) on Thursday April 17, 2003 @05:31PM (#5755191)

      Methinks you have your head on backwards.

      CDMA has poor interoperability; sure, if you only ever need a phone in the USA and your don't care about open standards, please, get a CDMA phone.

      If you travel at ALL, then GSM is currently the only way to go.

      The sooner CDMA and other US-centric telecom technologies buy the farm, the better for consumers.

      The insane convenience of having one-phone, one-number, 6 continents and no hassels roaming FAR outweighs the slight technological advance that the CDMA air interface has.

      • Re:Buy a CDMA phone instead. (Score:5, Interesting)

        by RzUpAnmsCwrds ( 262647 ) on Friday April 18, 2003 @12:41AM (#5757515)
        "If you travel at ALL, then GSM is currently the only way to go."

        I can travel in a country of 300 million people that is three times the size of Western Europe and never pay roaming fees or need to switch my phone. Not to mention coverage in Canada.

        "slight technological advance that the CDMA air interface has"

        2x more people per cell, as well as much larger cell sizes is not "slight". It's massive. That's why I have unlimited calling to anyone else on the same CDMA network. That's why I get unlimited off peak minutes and 500 free peak minutes. That's why I get unlimited 144kbps data service.

        GSM doesn't work in the US. The cell size is simply too small. If you look at the carriers who have adopted GSM (AT&T, T-Mobile, Cingular) vs. the carriers who have adopted CDMA (Sprint, Verizon), the CDMA services have far better coverage.

        17km cells may be fine when your country is the size of California. The US has fewer people than Western Europe, yet it is nearly three times larger. Much of that area is sparsely populated. Covering Wyoming using GSM cells is sinply not feasable.

        "The sooner CDMA and other US-centric telecom technologies buy the farm, the better for consumers."

        Nope. Having a diverse set of technologies is good for consumers. Being locked into a fast-aging standard is bad. What's good for consumers is having both standards available and letting the free market choose the best option.

        Most people in the US will rarely need to leave the country. Europeans may travel from country to country often, but Americans do not. Interoperability with other systems is not a criteria most Americans care about.

        So far, people in the US have chosen CDMA over GSM technologies. CDMA does more and costs less.

        • The parent [slashdot.org] article makes some good points about the relative suitability of GSM and CDMA in a large and sparsely-populated area such as North America, however one point needs addressing:

          Nope. Having a diverse set of technologies is good for consumers. Being locked into a fast-aging standard is bad. What's good for consumers is having both standards available and letting the free market choose the best option.

          Diversity in available technologies is only beneficial to consumers if those consumers are fr

  • Bah! How about a phone? Just more useless crap to drive the price up and make people trade up for the newest model.

  • Seriously... (Score:2, Interesting)

    by black mariah ( 654971 )
    Am I the only one that doesn't care if I can play games and take pictures with a PHONE? These things bug the hell out of me. They REALLY need to come up with a better word than PHONE to use for something where the communicative abilities have obviously taken a back seat to solitaire.

    ALSO, is there anything more COMPLETELY FUCKING STUPID than TEXT MESSAGING someone from a PHONE, where you could type less and ACTUALLY CALL THEM? GRRRRRRR......

    • Re:Seriously... (Score:3, Informative)

      by Malc ( 1751 )
      I don't think you understand why text messaging became so popular. In some places in the world, people haven't grown up with free local calls, or buying airtime in blocks. Voice calls were (are?) considerably more expensive than text messages. Thus they originally became popular with poor (cheap?) students and the like.
    • Is people who don't realize that not everyone has the same preferences as them. No matter how silly it may seem to you, some people like to send text messages and play video games from their phones.

      This is like shouting "tastes great" at someone who thinks the beer is "less filling."

      Or for geeks, shouting "vi" at an emacs user.

      By your logic, we need a new name for "computers" because all anybody uses them for is Word Processing and Solitaire. I propose we call them "Soliputer WP."
      • The problem is that there are no new models for those of us who just want a fucking phone. Believe it or not, there is a large demographic that just wants a mobile phone. Just a phone. Not something that has ten million other irritations that are purely unwelcome, no games, no screensavers and no web access. Just a phone.

        If you want one of these abominations, have fun. Meanwhile, the manufacturers are missing out on a lot of revenue from people like me who want a new phone, but not an arcade in my po

    • Re:Seriously... (Score:3, Interesting)

      by LinuxHam ( 52232 )
      I use AIM on my Nextel i95cl when I'm in meetings. The only bad thing is the constant vibrating interruption every time the other party sends a message.. and some people like to send one word per message, I swear.

      I also use it b/c I've been IM'ing with my friends and family for so many years and it's the only way I can talk to my peeps with unlimited anytime minutes from anywhere in the US to anywhere in the world via AIM.

      Motorola phones have this interesting text input mode called T9 whereby you don't ha

  • About the marketing.... (Score:3, Funny)

    by SuperCal ( 549671 ) on Thursday April 17, 2003 @04:31PM (#5754720) Homepage
    Judging from the product's webpage they are marketing to gay cowboys.... I hope that everyone gets the same picture and nokia hasn't set up some rotating images because that guy is seriously funny looking with that hat...
  • MMS support,Bluetooth,Triband, and polyphonic bliss

    I'd like IMAP, HTTP, and IM, PDA functionality that can sync via bluetooth to a Mac

    Funny, I have no desire for so many functions. I just want a phone & phone service that doesn't drop my calls, has long battery life, comes with cheap monthly service, and that lets me keep my current cell phone number even if I switch to a different company...
    • Well, it comes wuth Bluetooth, MMS, and such, but the SonyEricsson T68i also has kickass battery life, and excellent reception.

      the wireless earpiece and easy syncing are just a bonus, in my mind.

  • The Ring (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Angry Black Man ( 533969 ) <vverysmartman@@@hotmail...com> on Thursday April 17, 2003 @04:31PM (#5754724) Homepage
    Say goodbye to dialing numbers in the dark with that fscking pad... then when you finally get used to it and go and try to use your housephone it will take you roughly 4 minutes to dial 10 digits.

    Wtf was Nokia thinking? What happened to ease of use and ergonomics?

  • Separate components? (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Jason1729 ( 561790 ) on Thursday April 17, 2003 @04:32PM (#5754731)
    For what these things cost, you could buy a cell phone, digital camera, and PDA, all of which will have better specs than the phone. If you skimp a bit on the camera and PDA, you can add an mp3 player too.

    Considering that, what is the point of this combo phone? It's huge, I want my cell phone to be tiny so I can have it at the bottom of a pocket and forget about it. Another point, what happens when you want to upgrade one of the parts, with the combo-phone you lose everything and have to re-buy it all.

    To top things off, the 3650 is ugly, and why do they put the buttons in a ring around the bottom of the phone? Do they think it's a dial? It will make dialing numbers much harder and typing text on that thing will be a horrible experience.

    Jason
    ProfQuotes [profquotes.com]
  • The video that made the phone popular:

    http://ih8ufkr.com/humor/nokia.avi [ih8ufkr.com]

    Origins at snopes. [66.165.133.65]
  • I'll stick w/ my Samsung I330 [samsung.com] thank you. It has all of these features already.
  • Any further info on when these are coming out? These really hit the sweet spot for me. Good design, nice phone.

    T-Mobile is by far the friendliest provider I've dealt with, and after spending a few hours of my life over the year with other providers (Sprint PCS ehem) I'm willing to have that count for something.

    They have some good plans and let you unlock your phone after a bit.
  • Even though the treo and some small-screen MS smartphones are out there - I think slashdotters wont be happy until they have a full blown VOICE cdma CF-type-II expansion card that they can use with American network. Sure these new phone can do pictures and all, but they just aren't very customizable. People want to add cellphone capability to their much adored bleeding-edge PDA's.

    Audiovox just released the RTM-8000 for the European crowd [expansys.com] - a Tri-Band GPRS/GSM CF card that can be used with existing pocke

  • While I'm as gadgetfixated as anyone, I need my phone for one thing; to make calls. And maybe the occosinal SMS. I don't need a PDA (thats what my Palm is about), and I don't need to spend a shitload of cash for WAPing (I'm not that rich, and I can survive without checking my e-mail a few hours). So, since this phone don't offer me any significant increce on the things I deam inportant (batterylife mostly), I'll stick to me 5110 [nokia.com] a few more years.

  • Is there anyone else out there who uses their cell phone to place and recieve phone calls, or am I all alone now?
    • I'm with you.

      I tried to get a new phone last week, because my old Nokia's starting to fail on the "5" key. Worn out.

      Getting a phone that just makes calls is difficult. I gave up. I'm getting out my soldering iron and see if I can get the key to last another year or two.

  • or a paddle... remember paddles?
  • Basically you are paying 2 to 3 times more and getting less quality solution then if you just bought things like a digital camera and pda, and cell phone seperatly. Just about all cell phones will have the ability to access the internet, and most decent pda's can connect to your cell phone as well as connect to your digital camera, thus being able to send "pictures" through your cell phone (at much higher quality at that).

    Yeah yeah there is the "prestige" of owning the all in one device, but until that all

  • SyncML (Score:4, Informative)

    by JakiChan ( 141719 ) on Thursday April 17, 2003 @04:39PM (#5754810)
    This phone doesn't support SyncML, so the chances of you syncing with your Mac anytime soon are slim. Nokia does provide PC software to allow syncing with your Windows PC, though.

    And as for Bluetooth, once again Nokia has failed to implement the headset profile, although it does support the newer handsfree profile. I can't seem to find any details on the differences between the two but what it does mean for sure is that of the current Bluetooth headsets available, only the SonyEricson HBH-60 and the soon-to-arrive Nokia HDW-2 support that profile. Nokia is known for their poor and buggy Bluetooth support (they must hate that their rival Ericsson invented it) and they do seem to try the "embrace and extend" scheme once in a while - they want you to buy their Bluetooth device and not someone else's. They've used the headset profile in the 6310i, but that's it for the US market.

    It's hard not to support SonyEricsson (especially the Ericsson part) when they've made Bluetooth a licensed standard, and when they put things like SyncML, an open syncing standard, on their phones. And don't forget the SonyEricsson Clicker [mac.com] which is just plain cool.

    A good review of the 3650 is here [burn.com].

    • SyncML IS supported (Score:2, Interesting)

      by MoreDruid ( 584251 )
      I got one of these phones a few weeks ago (Hail Europe!) and Nokia provides SyncML sofware on their CD, along with 3 games: Bounce, some card games (Klondike 'n stuff) and Triple Pop.

      You can download an updated version of the Videorecorder app from the Nokia site as well, instead of video only, you get video & audio.

      I especially like the PC-Suite, you can drag 'n drop an mp3 to your mobile (if it's linked through cable, IR or BT) and it automatically is converted to a .wav/.mid ringtone (including the

      • I got one of these phones a few weeks ago (Hail Europe!) and Nokia provides SyncML sofware on their CD,

        As a Java app? That's kinda cool. The early release versions that were reviewed had CDs in Chinese, so it was kinda easy to overlook. We'll see if Apple decides to add support for it to iSync.

        Personally, I use MobileSync with my T68i and sync between Entourage and my phone. That is really nice and will make it hard to get a non SE phone next, although I dislike the T610/T616 because they're triban

  • Smartphones on CNET & Phonescoop (Score:3, Informative)

    by joelparker ( 586428 ) <joel@school.net> on Thursday April 17, 2003 @04:40PM (#5754826) Homepage
    Try the reviews on CNET [cnet.com] and PhoneScoop [phonescoop.com]

    I'm very happy with the Kyocera [kyocera-wireless.com],
    the new smartphone from Verizon [verizonwireless.com]

    IMHO it's worth time looking at individual apps
    on wireless PDA sites like Handango [handango.com].
    The right apps that fit your needs can make
    a huge difference in your satisfaction.

    Cheers, Joel

  • Treo? (Score:4, Interesting)

    by SlashChick ( 544252 ) <erica@e[ ]a.biz ['ric' in gap]> on Thursday April 17, 2003 @04:42PM (#5754831) Homepage Journal
    I have a Handspring Treo that I really get a kick out of. It works as a regular (although larger) flip phone when I need a phone, and as a PDA when I need a PDA. Today I was waiting at the salon to get my hair done, and while I was waiting, I was surfing Google and trying to find a good software package for one of my clients.

    The Treo has AIM/Yahoo/MSN support thanks to VeriChat [pdaapps.com], which I highly recommend. I also use Top Gun SSH [offshore.com.ai] to SSH into my servers from anywhere.

    Treo Central [treocentral.com] is the hookup for new software, and is also a good site for ringtones (if you're into them -- I like the wide selection of ringtones that come by default.)

    Also, PalmNet [treocentral.com] lets you connect your Treo to your laptop and get 10K/sec Internet access wherever you can find a Sprint PCS connection.

    All in all, if you need more than just a phone, the Treo is a winner. If you want just a phone, get just a phone... but even my boyfriend, who has one of those LG phones that you get for free with Verizon, gets jealous of me surfing around the Internet, playing games, and chatting when we're waiting in line for something.

    The Treo is $149 right now. If you are a current Sprint PCS customer and you sign another 1-year Advantage agreement, you may be able to receive a service credit. I got a $200 credit [4 1/2 months free] just for signing up for another year, but I had to negotiate heavily.

    Hope this helps...
  • Is there a bluetooth capable phone that has over 3 hours realworld talktime? My dad uses his phone an insane amount and absolutly goes crazy if his phone's battery dies during the day. I would love to get him a bluetooth phone so I can put to gether a CE based invoicing program and have it fax the invoice through the cellphone.

  • Nice, wish it was CDMA (Score:3, Interesting)

    by mpost4 ( 115369 ) on Thursday April 17, 2003 @04:46PM (#5754866) Homepage Journal
    I wish this was a CDMA phone, from the web site it had it listed as GSM
    I am looking forward to the point when they have a bluetooth CDMA cell phone, I have the palm pilot tungsten t and a bluetooth adaptor for my laptop. I found that Jabra makes a bluetooth headset for non-bluetooth phones, but it only works for audio it does not do data. Here is the response I got from them when I asked about the headset.

    The Bluetooth profile supports audio but not data. Sorry.

    Thank you for contacting JABRA Customer Service.

    Heather A. Fox
    Customer Service Representative
    800-327-2230
    -----Original Message-----
    From: Michael P. O'Connor [mailto:m.p.oconnor@verizon.net]
    Sent: Wednesday, April 16, 2003 4:10 PM
    To: info@jabra.com
    Subject: question about the FreeSpeak for non-bluetooth phone
    I have the Qualcomm QCP-2760 phone and was wondering if this will also let other Bluetooth device to connect to the cell phone, so that I can use a Bluetooth pda to dial the phone, and to use both a laptop and the pda to connect to the internet via the cell phone thought the dial connection I have setup for the phone. Can I do data over the Bluetooth adaptor? Thanks for your time.

    Michael P. O'Connor
    m.p.oconnor@verizon.net
    http://mikeocon nor.net

    This has been talked about a lot on the Tungsten T mailing list on yahoo groups ( http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Tungsten_T/ [yahoo.com]
  • I've tried a 3650. Buttons sucked as they aren't in the normal layout. However other phones to try. If you want big screen + Symbian + PDA then go for either Nokia 7650 or Sony Ericcson P800. If you want something small with a camera Nokia 7250 is quite cool. If you want something small with bluetooth. T68i. Just my opinion but they are all good phones.

    Rus
  • Thats a deal breaker right there!
  • Perhaps I missed it, but which mobile networks in the US offer/support this phone? (I'm on Voicestr^H^H^H^H^HT-Mobile, so I'm hoping that may be one of them)
  • > I'd like IMAP, HTTP, and IM, as well as PDA functionality that can sync via bluetooth to a Mac. I was looking at the Sony Ericsons, but this may work as well.

    U-S-A! U-S-A!

    No blood for IMAP, please.

    Friends, /.ers, countrymen. Do we really need four different kinds of icing on our devilsfood? A little first-world modesty would become us.

    That being said: will this thing sync with my Aibo's GP32? [slashdot.org]
  • OK, as someone that has had one of these babies for about three months now, I must caution you. The camera is handy, the video is cool (but ultimately kinda useless), and it is kind of a PDA. HOWEVER: 1. The Bluetooth is a little strange. I can't seem to get anything to bind to the device other than a headset. Nokia's other devices up until now have only supported the Headset profile in Bluetooth, so it is possible this device only has that profile and no others (connect to computer, adhoc network, etc.

  • What I want (Score:3, Interesting)

    by poot_rootbeer ( 188613 ) on Thursday April 17, 2003 @05:24PM (#5755136)
    You know what I want in a phone?
    - The ability to make calls
    - The ability to receive calls

    That's it. My 2-year-old Sprint PCS phone recently got a crack in the LCD, so I've been looking to buy a new unit to replace it.

    So far, I haven't found any models that cost less than $100, because they're all crammed full of features that I don't need, like color LCDs and voice recognition and built-in cameras and programmable polyphonic MIDI ringtone generators and speakerphone and integrated PDA features...

    Why isn't anyone serving the low-end market?
  • Unless Nokia finally got off their asses and wrote a descent Bluetooth stack, stay away from Nokia phones. Nokia has had a notoriously incomplete and horrific Bluetooth implementation from the get go.

    SonyEricsson phones have the best Bluetooth implementation yet, and are the only ones supported by iSync [apple.com] works out of the box with only SonyEricsson and Ericsson phones.

  • Out of box thinking (Score:4, Informative)

    by philipsblows ( 180703 ) on Thursday April 17, 2003 @05:36PM (#5755234) Homepage

    At first I was mildly intrigued by the look of the 3650, and since T-Mobile (my carrier in AZ) actually offers the phone directly, I did some looking around... bottom line, pass on it (IMHO).

    Others have pointed out the flaky Nokia bluetooth stuff, and the lack of syncml might actually be a bigger minus that I would have thought initially (I have an Ericsson R520 with all sorts of features, syncml among them, and I am just now starting to exercise the phone's feature set).

    The keypad has to go.

    I usually stop by here [infosync.no] to get some phone scoopage (there are certainly many, many other sites as well). They have a review of the 3650 at the bottom-- or use the review search feature-- with the final thoughts (on page 3 of the review) rather humorous, but probably too true to be ignored.

    Also on that site I found a review of the Siemens S55 [infosyncworld.com] which made me want to read more about the current and upcoming Siemens offerings. On the same site yet again is an article covering just that topic, about the upcoming SX1 and others [infosyncworld.com] from Siemens. The SX1 looks like it takes alternative keypad design in a slightly more functional direction.

    Having tried out the Jabra FreeSpeak [jabra.com] with my R520 (successfully and satisfactorily), and with a need to use some WAP and other wireless networking features lately, I am utterly convinced that getting a phone that does what you want it to do-- well-- is essential. Look past the buzz, get what will meet your needs, and pay attention to those details about keypad quality, low-light screen readability, and other such mundane details.

    But that SX1 still looks cool...

  • IM
    The Nokias are based on Psions OS, the people who maded Doom also make a ICQ client.

    HTTP
    Opera make a Symbain version of well, Opera.
    J2ME HTML - http://www.reqwireless.com/

    IMAP
    J2ME [midletcentral.com]
    Mail++ ( plus many others )

  • the 3650 is a disaster (Score:5, Informative)

    by jedrek ( 79264 ) on Thursday April 17, 2003 @05:47PM (#5755287) Homepage
    I've been working on a project with the 3650 over the past 2 1/2 months and, what can I say, it's a piece of shit. If other Nokias are going to be like this, then they will fall off their pedestal - Nokia is popular as hell, but they're not a monopoly. Their total disregard for quality has pushed a lot of users, including me, to Motorola, Samsung, SonyEricsson and Siemens. The 6210 was a fiasco, bluetooth in the 6310 was buggy as hell (fixed a bit into the 6310i).

    Anyway, what sucks in the 3650?

    * The keypad. This is definately the *worst* element, it flies in the face of convention and not in a cool and edgy way. I've been using this phone non-stop for the last 11 weeks and I haven't gotten used to it.

    * Usability. Nokia took over by offering good usability. Phones used to have a different button for everything, Nokia took that, stripped it down (in the 3110, 51x0, etc) to a single nav key. It's been worse lately - the 6310 has like 13 or 14 main menu options so you can't even use shortcuts (like menu, 2, 2, 1 to write an SMS) to control all the functions.

    While it's been slowly getting worse, the 3650 is just a leap ahead. The menus are organized so poorly that it took me 10 minutes to find the clock, took me a cab ride home (25km) to figure out how to turn the keypad tones off. It's just... complicated. Plus, the software is inconsistent - you can link some elements, you can't link others - even tough they seem identical to you.

    Anyway, the phone is a total pain in the ass, I hope we start doing something for a newer model but - knowing my luck - it'll be this model all the way until autumn.

    Ugh.

  • Still far from the mark (Score:4, Interesting)

    by elitman ( 455012 ) on Thursday April 17, 2003 @06:57PM (#5755713)
    I bought one of these off of eBay a couple of months ago, and sold it shortly after I bought it despite having invested in a 128MB MMC card. A few key comments:

    1. While I thought the keypad would be interesting and innovative, it's actually a disaster in consumer product design. The standard 3x4 keypad design is so commonly employed that people now input numbers/PINs/etc. as much for the pattern of the digits as the number the combined digits form. I found while using the device that even numbers I have known and dialed for years did not easily come to memory as the phone lacks the visual queues the familiar layout provides.

    2. The device supports a limited set of Bluetooth profiles, so that Jabra headset you bought or the first few generations of SonyEricsson headsets (through the HBH-30) won't work with it.

    3. IMAP over SSL/TLS? Forget it. Doesn't work.

    4. The user interface feels childish and inelegant. This is just my opinion, but when you compare it to either UIQ on the SonyEricsson P800 or PocketPC 2002 it appears more to be the product of an early-stage, open source project than commercial UI design.

    5. The video camera only captures ~12 seconds of video. This is NOT a storage limitation, as this restriction exists no matter how much storage you have available.

    6. Also personal opinion, the construction of the device feels cheap and "plasticy".

    Still, the device category has come a hell of a long way since the IBM/BellSouth Simon [gare.co.uk]...

  • The Phone That I'm Waiting For... (Score:3, Informative)

    by cjsnell ( 5825 ) on Thursday April 17, 2003 @07:11PM (#5755814) Journal
    I'm waiting for the Motorola V600 [motorola.com]. It's due out later this year.

    Big screen (65K colors), Bluetooth, J2ME, polyphonic rings, GPRS, and best of all, A NORMAL, USABLE KEYBOARD LAYOUT!

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