Dying for a New Phone
So I’m suddenly on the market for a Bluetooth-enabled cell phone that plays nice with Macs. I remember some of you in the community posting at various times over the past year about researching or purchasing new phones. What did you decide on? Would you recommend the phone you chose? More importantly, why or why not? I’d appreciate any and all insight, even if it’s just a link to something you wrote months ago or a resource I may have overlooked. This is where I began my search, the iSync Device Compatibility list.
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I’ve been using a SE Z600 for almost a year now. I really like it and would recommend it. I use BT heavily (for syncing with my powerbook and my BT headset). I also use the Salling Clicker ocassionally. It could be smaller, but for the feature set, and the UI, it does the job.
From gizmodo:
BenQ’s new phone
Simply too cool to be ignored! Or just go to Gizmodo and go to the cellphones section :D
If you don’t wait a month or so for the new Treo 650 to come out, you’re crazy.
I have a Treo 600 right now and my only complaint is lack of Bluetooth. The 650 is getting the ‘Tooth and will then officially be the perfect phone. iPod, phone, e-mail, browser, camera, organizer, all-in-one. Bliss.
BTW: If anyone is buying a new phone and switching service providers, Amazon is almost always the best to get your phone. You end up getting a $200 phone for negative $200. I got the Sony T610 that way, sold it on eBay for $200 and then bought my Treo for $400… so a net cost of $0 for a $600 phone.
$600 phone? Who’s crazy? Hahaha, I already have an iPod so I was thinking of easing into this cell phone thing. I guess I should have clarified. All I really need is a phone that syncs to my contacts. Compatibility with Salling Clicker and a decent browser would be nice though. But I don’t think I need video, camera or other gimmicks.
True, I wouldn’t pay $600 for a phone and that’s why the Amazon deal is so great. To me, I only have the tolerance to carry one device in my pocket and that’s why a phone and an iPod is not an option. 1GB of music on the Treo (via SD card) is close enough to an iPod that it works out nicely.
Well, i’ve been savoring to replace my Sony Ericsson k700i with a USD $600 s700! I’d probably wait till it dips to $450… which could take me to the holidays, much cheapo prices! ;)
won’t the bluetooth phone need to work with your cell phone carrier?
like (vernacular), there is only one verizon bluetooth phone.
Danny, I’m pretty sure we’ve got at least one supporting carrier in this area (Baltimore/DC) for any phone I might be interested in. Since all telcos suck, I plan on finding the technology first and then settling for the lesser of the evil that supports my selection.
Kevin, do you dislike the K700i? That’s actually one of the phones I was looking at. Budd almost has me sold on it. Especially with that OS X skin.
Mike, after having a 30GB iPod (and the music library and meatspace filesharing that comes with it) 1 GB just isn’t going to cut it. The iPod has a case that snaps nicely onto my iBook case so the phone can go in the pocket. No worries there.
I have the Sony Ericsson t616 and I absolutely love it. The interface is awesome and it has IR as well as Bluetooth. I haven’t had a chance to use the BT yet, but my roommate has the same phone (actually a slightly newer version) and he uses the BT with his iMac all the time.
The only downside to the phone is that the camera on it is pretty crappy (sample image). I don’t really use the camera that often, so it doesn’t concern me really. I’d much rather my phone be good at being a phone.
Jeebus, can somebody hook Sony Ericsson up with a get/set cookie script already? I’ve been to their site ten times tonight and every time I’ve had to select my continent and country. What is this, 1993?
I’ve been waiting for the Motorla V3, its sexy and matched my powerbook. The Motorola V71o is pretty nice, if you’re on Verizon. Not sure on thier friendliness with a mac yet, but one can hope. The Motorola MPX220 looks sweet too, but it runs on Windows Mobile, so I assume it’s not the best for a Mac.
I was in the same position as you are now about six months ago. I was a somewhat happy Sprint customer, desperatly wanting a Bluetooth (Mac friendly) phone bad to replace the aging phone I was currently using. Sprint was far from accomodating, as none of the phones in their lineup offered anything in terms of Bluetooth or Mac synchronization, so I already had a bad taste in my mouth from them. About a month before my obligatory one year contract with Sprint was up, the hunt for a new phone got serious.
I had narrowed my choices down to going with either Cingular or Verizon, (since I was already planning on ditching Sprint). My choice for a new phone was more about the phone than the coverage area or calling plan, since I don’t travel a whole lot and live in a fairly large metropolitan. My needs were simple, but I was picky. I wanted a small, good-looking (!important) Bluetooth / iSync’able phone with a lot of options, but at the same time easy to use. A camera phone wasn’t absolutely necessary, but I didn’t mind if it came with one.
At the time I was shopping around, Sony had just introduced the T637 - the replacement for their widely popular T616. I got in touch with Cingular and asked to be contacted when the T637 became available. Comparing the features of the T616 against the T637, everything stacked up almost the same on paper. Cingular followed up with me about a week later, and had received both a T616 and a T637 for me to compare both phones to side by side.
At first the differences were largely cosmetic, but after a few minutes use, the true usability differences became obvious. Firstly, the phones are exactly the same size, weight, and for the most part the same design. Where they differed was huge. The T637 had a far superior screen in terms of both brightness and quality, but the tactual feel and feedback of the keypad on the T637 turned me off. The T616 had small, but very easy to identify and use buttons, while in the newer T637 model, Sony decided to go with a larger, more “plasticy” feeling button - one that was extremely slippery and cumbersome to use. I equate the experience to using the buttons as what you might expect if you could touch and feel in 3d Apple’s Aqua buttons. Both phones had built-in cameras, Bluetooth, and the whole 9 yards.
To make a long story short, I went with the T616 (now discontinued) and all other phones out on the market at that time, based mainly on the beauty and quality of the T637’s screen, relatively small size of the phone (I’m not a person who likes a flip-phone design), and Mac iSync compatability - besides the T637 just looked damn better than any other phone, especially setting nicely next to my PowerBook.
I’ve had the T637 now for about 4 months, and I’m very pleased I with it. Cingular’s service, customer support, and billing has been superb so far, and the number portability transition went extremely smooth, being completed in just about 5 minutes (no joke). Once I got over the almost slippery “jelly-like” feel of the T637’s “aqua” buttons and numeric keypad, I’ve fallen in love with the rest of the phone. To be completely honest, the quality of the built-in camera pretty much sucks for taking any non-daylight pictures, but like I said earlier, it wasn’t a feature I had to have. Your mileage, needs and impressions may vary.
If I was in the market for buying a new phone now, or had to do it all over again, I’d still go with my T637 - hands down. I’ve just been that happy with it.
Regardless of which Bluetooth phone you go with, I’d highly recommend taking a look at BluePhoneMenu: a small application that adds Caller ID and SMS functionality to your Mac OS X menu bar and desktop using your Bluetooth enabled phone; not to many a ton more other features.
And, if you’re anything of the Apple lover I am, you can adorn your T637 with many high-quality Aqua, Panther, or Apple / OS X themes, not to mention the fact that you can use your phone as Bluetooth modem, and a whole lot of other things.
I sold my T610 for the following reasons, which may or may not be important to you:
Sony, for some crazy reason, doesn’t insert dashes into phone numbers when they are displayed on screen. Getting a call from 12069593852 takes a little more work to identify than 1-206-959-3852. It annoyed the hell out of me.
I didn’t like the procedure for unlocking the KeyLock (which you have to use because it’s not a flip phone).
No speakerphone.
Although the interface is reasonably “pretty”, I’ve never liked how Sony interfaces actually work compared to LGs, Palms, Motorolas, and even Samsungs.
It just feels too small against my face when I’m taking a call. Small is great in your pocket, but there is something to be said for a phone feeling like a phone when you’re talking on it. I like flip phones and Treos a lot for this reason.
Take these details with a grain of salt because I am totally neurotic about my phones. It’s the most important device I carry so if it ain’t perfect, it maddens me to no end.
If you’re lucky you can get old Ericsson T68i. At least I can still find them (brand new) from local shops here, just few months ago bought one to co-worker, $200 or so, hijacked mine from my wife:-), now she has some Nokia. Still not the cheapest, but all features and small size. Works with Mac 100%. very good phone indeed.
yep, I’ve got a k700i (replaced my t610), and it fits the bill for me perfectly. It plays well with the Mac (you can even get free salling itunes extensions for the built in bluetooth remote control), it takes reasonable snaps for a phone (just discovered the panorama snap’n’stitch function with much glee), it has 40Mb of memory (great for an album’s worth of 64kbs AACs if the ipod’s at home - and it can play through the int speaker), and above all, it’s small and works faultlessly as a phone. It ticks all the boxes for me (and a few more) and I don’t even have to put up with a bulky smartphone.
Most of the phones mentioned above are all pretty worthy, but if you can get a k700i on your plan, I’d recommend it.
I have been using a Nokia 6230 for about a month now. It is fantastic. It doesn’t play nice with iSync yet, but that is supposedly coming soon. I dropped a t610 for it due to SE’s terrible antennas. It is about the same size as the t610 and is first and foremost a good phone. But it also has a video camera and an mp3 player, as a little bonus.
v600
$24.99 - Amazon
Someone mentioned the Motorola V710 from Verizon. Just thought I should mention that while Motorola build in full BT capabilities Verizon had most of the useful ones disabled. Specifically, the capabilities “responsible for transferring photos and phone numbers or performing synchronization with a PC wirelessly.” Full details here. Personaly, I’de stay away from Verizon, but then I don’t have the luxary of multiple carriers in my area like you.
I’d go with the Siemens S65. It sports Bluetooth, nice big screen and a fair camera (1.3mp). It’s tri-band so it should be compatible with one of the many networks America has.*
Looks nice too. Otherwise go with samsung if you want a flip-phone, or Sony-Erricson if you don’t mind rather square phones.
*this is also the reason you keep lagging behind on phones, though you seem to be catching up.
First off I should say that I’m no mobile phone power user so really haven’t explored the technical aspects of the k700i to their fullest. However it’s a nice looking, light weight phone that syncs with my Mac address book quite happily. The Mac theme is cool and I’ve used the radio option quite a lot, mostly because you can’t fit that many mp3’s on it. I also believe you can use Sailing Clicker on it but I’ve not had a go yet.
On the negative side the battery life isn’t great. Luckily I’ve got a USB charger so can charge it up at work when I need to. The camera not very good and the pics have a huge amount of noise on them. A little disappointing as a lot of the marketing revolves around the phones form factor making it look like a camera.
On the whole I’m pretty happy with it. It does everything I need from a phone in a small, nice looking package. However if you’re a phone super-user I’m sure there are probably more fully featured phones out there, like the Nokia 7610.
I am in the same kanundrum and am looking for a sleek bluetooth phone. In my searches and findings I came across some info that probably needs to get shared about “Bluesnarfing”. Personally I am not too worried about this taking place. But in larger cities I might look out for it. It is also nice to know I am not the only anal about the right kind of phone…i.e. no flip for me please, options options and more options. I am looking at T-Mobiles service and phone product list as I have heard some good things, and the list of phone choices is very wide-range.
I will report more findings when more are available.
Happy Hunting…Bluetooth and Beyond!
I’ve been using the a few minor issues), though I’ve not yet played with Salling Clicker. I’d been a little worried about form factor before buying it (the thing looks like a brick in most product shots), but all in all it’s been a decent little phone.
Shaun, just go to “sonyericsson.com/us” instead of going through the global homepage.
I own a K700i and it’s the best mobile phone I’ve purchased yet.
I like that SE phones always work great with iSync, I’ve never has any issues. I like the new UI, the 40mb of memory, the media player supports MP3 and unprotected AAC files, has a speaker, radio, VGA camera, and video.
The signal is great unlike the T610 and T630 phones. The battery life is one of my only complaints, but I’ve been reading around and people say that using Nokia’s BLD-3 batteries give longer battery life.
Read some good reviews at engadget.com.
I recommend the Sony Ericsson T68i. It’s an older phone so you should be able to find it for cheap. It’s got Bluetooth, but no camera (which you said you didn’t want). About the only thing it doesn’t have is polyphonic ringtones. If that’s your thing, then hey, don’t get this phone.
But the T68i is a great phone and works perfectly with Macs.
I recently purchased the SonyEricsson P900 (quite a good price as it’s being replaced by the P910) and I love it … it’s bluetooth reception is awesome… the loudspeaker is great when playing MP3 ‘s … the video is good for that time when yr mate is trashed and you wanna recall what happened the night before ….. and you can get all kindas af excellent downloads (currently have a thing that changes the symbian OS to look and work like XP… and yes, you can get an MacOS X theme too)
…oh and ya, it sync to yr contact / calendar / e-mail
Check out the T608 from Sprint. It’s the phone that Ford is using right now to kick of their big Bluetooth/Car integration thingee. It syncs to my Addressbok and ICal perfectly.
Nokia 6230.
nuff said.
Nokia 3660 was my choice. 150 dollas to make me holla. I’ve got Salling Clicker, which works via Bluetooth to control my stereo’s feed of iTunes playing through the wifi back in the office.
Another nice app is IR Remote, which has each and every model of remote control preset. Go to a bar or your couch and change the track / station / song as you will with your cell. The Symbian OS for phones is a must.
Also, iPhoto’s seamless integration with Address book allows you to drop photos onto it’s entries. Then when you Sync, all of those thumbnails transfer over. The face shows up when that entry calls.
And lastly, Proximity Sync is also key. Whenever the phone comes within range, it automatically connects / transfers your profile. Nice touch.
Good luck! Thanks for being you.
I just picked up a “used” Sony-Ericsson z600 on eBay for less than $200 (plus shipping). Bluetooth, Camera, Java… and I can even make and receive phone calls!
I love it.
The Sony T610(616) is a great phone and I’ve been very pleased with mine. I have a Sony Bluetooth headset that I use all the time, but have only tried syncing with my Mac once with so-so results.
Biggest issue with the phone is ring volume, even at its max it’s not loud enough. Also the display is impossible to read outdoors.
I second the T637. I’ve had mine for two months and I love it. Best phone for the money as far as size and price go. The bluetooth plays great with Salling Clicker.
I don’t want to repeat Ryan’s post, so I’ll just say I agree, the T637 is the way to go.
Just came across Phone Agent for the SE line which makes the K700i even more appetizing.
The GF and I got Sony Ericsson T610’s, because they looked pretty good, had Bluetooth, and all the rest of the gadgets.
We’ve since discovered they’re terrible, terrible, terrible phones:
[1] The screen, which works great in the dark, is impossible to see in day light. When I walk down the street here in SF I have to either duck into a shaded doorway, or hold the phone under my t-shirt to see what’s happening. It’s like a laptop screen, useless in the sun. Makes me quite angry actually.
[2] The reception is just utterly fucking completely useless. I’ve done a bunch of reading since we got the phones and found it’s a rubbish phone for reception. Makes me very angry.
[3] Battery life ain’t great. That crappy screen munching away at it I expect.
[4] It does weird things like you press ‘answer’ and it cuts you off. Nice.
Luckily we got $100 back with each phone, so we’re not out of pocket (far from it), it’s just annoying to have a crappy phone.
Just don’t get one.
I got the Sony Ericsson T637 a couple months ago and it rocks! Mac friendly and bluetooth enabled. I can’t say enough great things about it…
I must echo the above comments criticizing the T616 (and its ilk). The interface drives my nuts - visual design is pretty with my little OS X skin, etc - but the interaction design is just crappy. It may be b/c I’ve owned Nokia phones up to this point and so SE’s shortcomings are more readily apparent. (this phone was the freebie with my plan). I realized after using it, that I have the same issues with the Sony-designed software on my Clie. Sony sucks in the interface/interaction design dept (software, that is; no probs with their hardware/components).
Can’t wait to get back to Nokia (or check out Moto’s recent offerings). My wife has a Treo and loves it, but I don’t really need all those features (she does).
Sorry, for the very late reply to Shaun’s post, way, way, way up there! ;)
Did you get yours already?
Nope, I have no qualms regarding the k700i, I’d recommend it! It is could be the best phone I’ve used ever! :D Small, nice to hold and use! Bluetooth implementation on Sony/Ericsson phones is excellent (it did crap out to me a couple of times, due to an old firmware), battery life to me is fine… 2days max. Signal reception is great, my house is one big dead spot on the network I’m currently on, but at least it picks up signals from time to time, compared to my old phones which ain’t picking up anything!
Its only drawback so far, (to me and other phones in its league), is the lack of a memory slot. But you’d probably be fine with its 41mb of free space.
I’m just looking forward to the newer s700i, because its the k700i with bigger screen, a memory stick slot and a 1.3mp camera on it! It ditches all other current 1mp offerings by Nokia and Siemens as far as I know. Capturing ‘detailed enough’ shots for is something to look out for on a mobile phone these days.
I’ve been using my Nokia 6600 for a few months and it works great. And I’m also using it, without any problem with my PowerBook. Anyway, it depends on what you need. I had a Sony Ericsson P800 before, but I think it was more a PDA than a phone, so I changed it…
Michele
I’d really urge you to go for a Nokia. Mainly because what makes Nokia’s stand out from the rest is the user interface of the phone itself. Series60 is sooo user friendly it’s amazing. I’d personally will never go back to using a Sony Ericsson or a Motorola. Yuck.
I have Sony Ericcson’s P800 anbd need to upgrade too, but I am going to wait for the new Motorola/Apple joint venture. Although just about adequate, the P800 suffers from a lot of shortcomings, which haven’t been solved on the P900 yet:
No undos! I have lost many phone numbers because of that - you think you are writing in something, the OCR software decides you wanted to select the middle 3 digits of a number and delete them… and they are gone forever,
iSync doesn’t work too well with it. The main problem is that it doesn’t give users the chance to configure what it is going to do - it just takes decisions on which contacts to keep and which to thrash, and most of these decisions are bad ones
OCR is dodgy (I never manage more than three letters before the phone gets one wrong) and the keyboard looks hard to use
You can only download/install software when the base station connected to a PC
If you cannot wait you’d be better off buying the cheapest set you can find (the K700i looks good and has been recommended by friends) and wait for Apple to release its overpriced funky phone set with Motorola