Mark Boulton

27 Responses to “Upgrading your mobile phone”

1. 
   Virginia said on: March 26th, 2006 at 10:51 pm

   You’re kid­ding — no iSync sup­port? I was ser­i­ously con­sid­er­ing this phone myself, until SXSW ate all my money. My busi­ness part­ner has one, and it’s a beau­ti­ful thing. I just assumed it had sync sup­port. Bah humbug. 

   The Apple for­ums have some tips on how to at least get your con­tacts onto the phone without hav­ing to manu­ally enter them, so that’s something…

2. 
   Mike D. said on: March 26th, 2006 at 11:10 pm

   If you’re hip on Nokias, the new E70 looks like the dog’s bol­lucks to me. Small, full key­board, wifi, and just about everything else.

3. 
   Chris Mear said on: March 26th, 2006 at 11:16 pm

   The Nokia 6680 has always worked very well for me with iSync. It’s a bit chunky, though.

4. 
   Stu Schaff said on: March 26th, 2006 at 11:49 pm

   Is the Motorola Razr sup­por­ted by iSync?  I was told at the Cin­gu­lar store yes­ter­day that of all the phones they offer with bluetooth, it seems to have the best recep­tion as well.  And it’s pretty.

5. 
   Alexander Hutton said on: March 27th, 2006 at 12:08 am

   iSynch becomes less import­ant if the phone can oper­ate as a modem for EVDO (and you can get flat rate bandwidth). 

   I recently dropped my Treo 650 (bluetooth and Synch­ing) for my beat up old Nokia 3360 — I just have very little use for PDA/Smartphone applic­a­tions — too much laptop, too little need for tiny little applications.

6. 
   Masklinn said on: March 27th, 2006 at 12:26 am

   I’m not sure that the soon-to-be-released Nokia E70 is com­pat­ible with iSync (you’ll have to check), but it’s the one i’m wait­ing for. Full key­board, WiFi (on top of just about everything else) and Min­iSD cards (which means high capa­cit­ies for very fair prices) are win­ners for me, and the 2MPix cam­era is the icing on the cake. 

   Oh, and the Min­iSD card reader is on top of the bat­tery (and not under it), which means that the memory cards can be hotswapped.

7. 
   daaku said on: March 27th, 2006 at 4:10 am

   Check out the Nokia N80.
   
   - WiFi (802.11g!)
   
   - Bluetooth
   
   - PDA
   
   - Syn­cML
   
   - WebKit/Konqueror based web browser
   
   - Opera
   

   - Hi-Res Screen (352x416)
   
   - 3MP Cam­era + 0.3 Cam­era for 3G Video Calls 

   http://www.nokia.com/n80

   [Talk about SEO’ed URL’s!] 

   No, I dont work for Nokia, just wait­ing to get my hands on this phone myself! (It not very eas­ily available)

8. 
   Si said on: March 27th, 2006 at 9:30 am

   I can vouch for the N-range of Nokias. I’ve got a N70 which is my life support. 

   I’m not sure if its got iSync sup­port but it does do a sim­ilar job via the Nokia PC suite (obvi­ously no good to you Mac-operators). 

   It is a damned good phone though, even if it is a little on the bulkier side.

9. 
   Steve Marshall said on: March 27th, 2006 at 9:39 am

   The one big prob­lem with Nokias, for me, is that the Series 40 phones don’t work with iSync, and the Series 60 phones are Symbian-based, and are there­fore remark­able more for the fact that they’re slow as hell and unstable than any­thing else. That, and Series 60 gen­er­ally is far, far too cluttered (due to being a smart­phone OS). 

   Gen­er­ally, Series 40 phones have good levels of usab­il­ity, at a sim­ilar level to the Sony Eric­sson (non-UIQ) phones. What I can say, though, is that Sony Eric­sson non-UIQ phones tend to have more fea­tures, bet­ter real­ised, and at bet­ter price-points than Nokia. 

   If you’re look­ing at smart­phones, I wouldn’t even bother look­ing at Nokia: their ver­sion of Sym­bian is renowned for being slow, unstable, and gen­er­ally not very intuitive. 

   Per­son­ally, as much as I like the looks of some of the Nokia phones (the N-series, for example, and the 72xx series), all the phones that appeal to me either don’t have the fea­tures I need (iSync sup­port, et al.) or use Symbian. 

   Dis­claimer: I’ve used mostly SE phones for the last few years, save a Motorola Razr (which was really sexy, but utterly, utterly shite).

10. 
    Mark Boulton said on: March 27th, 2006 at 11:51 am

    Ok, well it looks like I can’t actu­ally upgrade until August, which leaves me a while to do the research into the best option.

    I’m prob­ably still going to go for the Nokia, des­pite the lack of iSync sup­port. I’m just not into car­ry­ing around a bulky device that can do everything. Maybe in six months time either Nokia or Apple will sort them­selves out and sup­port each other. I won’t hold my breath though.

11. 
    neoguri said on: March 27th, 2006 at 12:57 pm

    Apple seems plain lazy when it comes to adding iSync sup­port. Luck­ily oth­ers can do the work Apple lacks in. This guy is col­lect­ing info and suc­ces stor­ies of DIY iSync scripts. 

    On Nokia phones:
    
    < blockquote>Positive feed­back so far: Nokia N70, N71, N80, N90, N91, N92, E60, E61, 6680, 6630, 7710, 9300, 9500

    Neg­at­ive: Nokia all Series 40 phones, 6021, 6230, 6255, 8800, 8801</blockquote>

12. 
    Jason Santa Maria said on: March 27th, 2006 at 1:41 pm

    I just bought an unlocked Motorola SLVR and it ful­fills all of your require­ments (which were the same ones I had too), includ­ing iSync support.

13. 
    Les said on: March 27th, 2006 at 3:25 pm

    They’re not Nokias but they might be around when you renew: new Sony Eric­ssons were shown at CeBIT 2006 

    http://www.sonyericsson.com/cebit/flash.html

14. 
    Ryan said on: March 28th, 2006 at 12:38 am

    I’ve been look­ing at these: 

    Motorolla Razr V3
    
    Motorolla Slvr S7
    
    BenQ-Siemens EF81 

    I think they all fit the bill.  The EF81 looks beau­ti­ful to my eye. 

    How­ever, those pesky iPhone rumours have sur­faced again, this time int he form or an iPod with phone fea­tures. Con­sid­er­ing I don’t do any­thing with my phone except make calls, txt people and sync my address book, I’ll wait a couple of months then buy whatever is the best at the time.

    :)

15. 
    *helmen said on: March 28th, 2006 at 12:47 am

    I have some exper­i­ence with Nokia and Motorola, but I can recom­mend only Sony Eric­sson phones. Now I have Sony Eric­sson K750i and Power­Book. I’m syn­chron­iz­ing my phone (cal­en­dar, to-do, phone­book) with my Power­Book every day without any problems. 

    I’m using my K750i like a phone, organ­izer, MP3 player and digital camera. 

    My Most using Apps:
    
    - Opera Mini (web browser)
    

    - IM+ (Instant Mes­sen­ger)
    
    - Maps
    
    - Salling Clicker (remote con­trol)
    
    - Dic­tion­ary
    
    - RSS Reader 

    K750i
    
    - Dimen­sions: 100 x 46 x 20.5 mm
    
    - Weight: 99 g
    

    - Looks good
    
    - Syn­cML
    
    - Bluetooth 2.0
    
    - 2MP Camera 

    You can read some more inform­a­tions and check apps for K750i on my blog.

    Here you can watch my phtos from Sony Eric­sson K750i.

16. 
    Aaron said on: March 28th, 2006 at 9:47 pm

    I’d give my vote to the Sony Eric­sson as well. Maybe the UI has been updated since you used it, because I find mine to be a lot faster and intu­it­ive than any phone I’ve used. I use a W600, and while it doesn’t work with iSync in OSX 10.3, it’s sup­posed to be sup­por­ted in 10.4. I can also use it to check e-mail, which is very handy. The built in iTunes-esque music player is great for occas­sions when your iPod is unavail­able (or dead).

17. 
    The Gimp said on: March 28th, 2006 at 9:49 pm

    I just pur­chased a RAZR from Ver­i­zon which didn’t sup­port iSync. Hack­ing the plist file to duplic­ate a phone that I knew worked even­tu­ally got iSync work­ing for me. You might be able to do the same with the Nokia. I’ll check out the plist file for phone sup­port and post if I fig­ure any­thing out.

18. 
    Mark Boulton said on: March 29th, 2006 at 10:53 am

    Aaron: I’m ser­i­ously con­sid­er­ing the Sony Eric­sson. It’s not too bad and the iSync sup­port may well clinch the deal. Like I said though, I’ve got another six months to make up my mind, so no ini­tial rush.

    I just wish Nokia and Apple would sort them­selves out. If Nokia are going to con­tinue releas­ing series 60 phones, why can’t Apple sup­port them? I’m sure there’s a very good reason why not, and it’s prob­ably due to Nokia’s inab­il­ity to sup­port open formats, it just pains me that I have to switch from an oper­at­ing sys­tem I’m not used to. 

    I don’t like change.

19. 
    Graham Sanders said on: March 30th, 2006 at 10:53 pm

    Hi Mark

    For what it’s worth I upgraded my phone recently from a Sony Eric­sson S700i to a Sony Eric­sson K750i and boy oh boy am I am happy bunny. It ticks all your list and adds some more: http://tinyurl.com/55g58

    iSync
    
    Bluetooth
    
    FM radio
    
    Cam­era 2 mega­pixel
    
    Video Recorder
    

    Photo Light
    
    Music Player (you can make your own mp3 playl­ists)
    
    Memory Stick PRO Duo? (comes with 64mb card)
    
    Speaker phone (use­ful for con­fer­ence calls)
    
    Fit in back pocket
    
    Looks very, very good
    
    Small and light
    
    Makes phone calls as well which is always useful :) 

    Think I missed my voca­tion in life as a Sony salesman. 

    Oh and before i for­get I sold my pre­vi­ous Sony Eric­sson S700i on ebay for ?100 which has nicely paid for 3 months usage. 

    This HAS to be a winner!!!

20. 
    Ryan said on: March 31st, 2006 at 1:01 am

    Any­one have any exper­i­ence with the Motorola SLVR and iSync etc? 

    PS. Your com­ment fom requires an email address, but doesn’t flag the field with a ?. 

    :)

21. 
    David Hughes said on: March 31st, 2006 at 10:51 am

    I have a K750i and really like it.  Works very well with the Mac — SE still have the best Bluetooth implementation. 

    If you are wait­ing until August then the K800i will be avail­able — the 3G ver­sion of teh K750i with a 3.2mp camera! 

    Looks lovely! 

    http://www.sonyericsson.com/spg.jsp?cc=global&lc=en&ver=4001&template=pp1_1_1&zone=pp&lm=pp1&pid=10407

    David

22. 
    Chris Mear said on: April 4th, 2006 at 12:02 am

    News­flash: OS X 10.4.6 update adds Nokia 6280 iSync support. 

    http://www.apple.com/macosx/features/isync/devices.html

23. 
    Ivan Brezak Brkan said on: April 4th, 2006 at 11:04 am

    I would strongly recom­mend get­ting a Sony Eric­sson phone because of its soft­ware which is prob­ably the most intu­it­ive on any mobile phone, and sup­ports applic­a­tions like Salling Clicker and Blue Phole Elite! I just bought a SE K750i and I couldn’t be hap­pier… I ticks all of your wishes includ­ing iSync sup­port. It would be the ulti­mate phone if the feel of it was more metalic (some­thing like the Motorola L7, which has ter­rible soft­ware), but thats just me. The cam­era is one of the best I’ve seen. You should check out GSMarena.com and Mobile-review.com for some mobile phone reviews! I do recom­mend the K750i… Its sexy, yet “smart” too! ;)

24. 
    Robert Nicholson said on: April 5th, 2006 at 6:30 pm

    I have an N80 and I can tell you that I don’t think it’s sup­por­ted by iSync because Apple hasn’t signed their sync cli­ent yet and you can­not install unsigned apps on an Series 60 3^rd gen device like the N80. If any­body has got­ten the N80 work­ing with iSync I’d sure love to hear about it.

25. 
    hbielen said on: April 6th, 2006 at 11:07 am

    soon you’ll be able to install Win­dows on your Mac (http://www.apple.com/macosx/bootcamp/)and then you’ll be able to instal the Nokia PC suite on it. Maybe?

26. 
    Virginia said on: April 6th, 2006 at 11:48 pm

    Did you see? 10.4.6 updated the list of com­pat­ible devices for iSync, and the 6820 is on it. Weeeee!

27. 
    Mike Stenhouse said on: April 7th, 2006 at 7:04 pm

    I just ordered myself a Treo 650… Aging a little now but it’s my first toe in the smart phone pool. I want IMAP email, Opera Mini and a decent screen. That’s it. I’ll report back!