Note: For the next few posts, I will cover my choice of a new mobile phone, what considerations I have made and what applications I am running through it.
As I said in my previous post, I eventually decided on getting a phone that runs Android. The question, then, was which phone to get. Living in Norway, the selection is rather limited, and I was not about to go abroad to get my phone. Hence, the Choice was between HTC’s Magic and Hero, Sony Ericsson’s Xperia and Samsungs I7500.
I tried out all four models, and found that it came down to the two offerings from HTC. I then looked at the specs for the two phones, and really, they’re so closely matched, it all, in the end, came down to design. I can understand why some people might like the “lip” on the Hero, but I didn’t, and so, my choice was the HTC Magic
Category: Mobile phone
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A new cellphone – Choosing phone
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A new cellphone – Choosing platform
Note: For the next few posts, I will cover my choice of a new mobile phone, what considerations I have made and what applications I am running through it.
I’ve been using my old mobile phone, a Nokia E65, for almost two years now, and I am pretty impressed with it. It has had to stand up to a lot of abuse, and still works pretty well. Even so, I have been feeling it’s time to choose a new one, and this time I not only wanted a phone, I wanted a gadget as well, something with which I could do a lot of different things. In a word, I wanted a smartphone.
Strictly speaking, the E65 almost falls into that bracket already, with its options for expansion on the software side. The problem is just that there aren’t a lot of apps for it, and the outlook for that to expand is bleak to say the least. Also, it just isn’t sexy. At all. And really, I wanted something sexy now.
The list of contenders was quickly pared down; I was happy with Nokia, but what I’d seen of their offering on the market (the N97) just didn’t impress me much. I also felt it was much too clunky. Blackberry never even came into consideration, for reasons I’m not about to cover here. Samsung, Sony Ericsson and LG are all decent brands that I don’t like. This left me with two choices: Apple’s iPhone, or a phone running Android.
One of my major concerns was getting my list of contacts and my calendar up and running as quickly as possible. My employer uses DME Sync to sync Notes data to handheld units, but it’s not exactly as stable as I would like. On the other hand, I use Google Mail, Calendar and Contacts for most of my needs. DME Sync is available for the iPhone, but not Android. Google Sync is available for both platforms.
In the end, my choice came down to three things:
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Resolving "Packet data not available, check network services" errors
From time to time, I am called upon to troubleshoot problems with cell phones. Mostly the solution involves telling the user to get a new phone, or publish a new configuration to the phone, but every now and again, I see problems that are slightly more complicated.
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DME Sync: "Invalid or expired certificate"
My employer uses DME Sync to synchronise email, calendar and contacts from Lotus Notes to mobile phones. A nifty little app, it basically connects to the webmail server, then downloads and uploads the relevant data. This makes for smooth migration from one phone to another, and means the users have the data where they need it, when they need it.
I recently pushed the app to a user’s phone, only to have the user tell me the install failed. He said it flashed an error message saying “Invalid or expired certificate”. No matter how many times I repushed the package, he’d get this error.
Consulting with one of the admins for the system, I asked the user to check if the date setting was correct. As it turned out, it wasn’t. As soon as the user set the correct time and date, the install went through without a hitch.