Nokia smartphone neep
Nov. 23rd, 2004 05:29 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
msagaraI have found the new technical gadget that has my name on it.
My current phone is an old Treo 180g; my previous three phones were various flavours of Nokia. I don't hate the Treo; I do hate its battery life because, well, I forget to plug it in often enough. Which has meant, in the last few months, that I haven't had a phone handy. The upside? No annoying phone calls. The downside? No ability to make annoying phone calls.
So I went off searching, finally, for a new phone. Where new in this case means old enough that I can get it for Not Too Much money. I discovered, in this process, that fido has been purchased by Rogers. When did that happen? (As it turned out, I picked up the Sony T610 for not very much money, which has a lithium-polymer batter that runs for days, even by real test standards; it also has a crappy camera, which seems to be something that's required of the mid-range and up).
Ahem. Sorry. While searching for information on the phones that fido offers, I hit the Nokia site... and there it was, on the front page: the phone of my dreams. Well, except technically it's not really a phone.
It's a... 640x320 resolution hand-held Symbian OS platform that happens to also be a phone, a (crappy) camera, an MP3 player, a web-browser. I don't think it makes toast. But -- no chiclet keyboard. No thumboard. Just a stylus. There's apparently some form of handwriting recognition. If anyone out there knows more than I do -- which would be, if anyone sees one, touches one, or has used Symbian OS in smartphones -- that would be great. I've done all the internet/googling, so the standard information, the manual, the developers papers, etc., are now in my hands; I want a better sense of how it handles.
Some of you may know that my previous love-of-life was the Newton MessagePad 2000 (with the upgrade). It was and is large and bulky when compared to handhelds these days, but it was designed for actual input and use, and the OS was great for that. Steve Jobs killed it. I don't care why. I still use it from time to time, and travel with it when space permits, and I've been watching other devices to see whether or not one will appear that will, at last, be a suitable replacement for what was produced in, I believe, 1996.
This might be it.
Which is not, of course, why I'm writing. I'm writing because Nokia has no current plans to sell the 7710 in the Americas. Yes, that's the sound of me grinding my teeth to crowns. It's a (theoretical) 4Q Asia/Africa release, and a (also theoretical) 1Q 2005 Europe release... and there are no plans to bring it to where I can easily buy it.
Sob.
Okay. I'll try to stop obsessing now.
My current phone is an old Treo 180g; my previous three phones were various flavours of Nokia. I don't hate the Treo; I do hate its battery life because, well, I forget to plug it in often enough. Which has meant, in the last few months, that I haven't had a phone handy. The upside? No annoying phone calls. The downside? No ability to make annoying phone calls.
So I went off searching, finally, for a new phone. Where new in this case means old enough that I can get it for Not Too Much money. I discovered, in this process, that fido has been purchased by Rogers. When did that happen? (As it turned out, I picked up the Sony T610 for not very much money, which has a lithium-polymer batter that runs for days, even by real test standards; it also has a crappy camera, which seems to be something that's required of the mid-range and up).
Ahem. Sorry. While searching for information on the phones that fido offers, I hit the Nokia site... and there it was, on the front page: the phone of my dreams. Well, except technically it's not really a phone.
It's a... 640x320 resolution hand-held Symbian OS platform that happens to also be a phone, a (crappy) camera, an MP3 player, a web-browser. I don't think it makes toast. But -- no chiclet keyboard. No thumboard. Just a stylus. There's apparently some form of handwriting recognition. If anyone out there knows more than I do -- which would be, if anyone sees one, touches one, or has used Symbian OS in smartphones -- that would be great. I've done all the internet/googling, so the standard information, the manual, the developers papers, etc., are now in my hands; I want a better sense of how it handles.
Some of you may know that my previous love-of-life was the Newton MessagePad 2000 (with the upgrade). It was and is large and bulky when compared to handhelds these days, but it was designed for actual input and use, and the OS was great for that. Steve Jobs killed it. I don't care why. I still use it from time to time, and travel with it when space permits, and I've been watching other devices to see whether or not one will appear that will, at last, be a suitable replacement for what was produced in, I believe, 1996.
This might be it.
Which is not, of course, why I'm writing. I'm writing because Nokia has no current plans to sell the 7710 in the Americas. Yes, that's the sound of me grinding my teeth to crowns. It's a (theoretical) 4Q Asia/Africa release, and a (also theoretical) 1Q 2005 Europe release... and there are no plans to bring it to where I can easily buy it.
Sob.
Okay. I'll try to stop obsessing now.
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Jabberwocky
Date: 2004-11-24 11:03 am (UTC)linked here (http://www.angelos.demon.co.uk/clare/literature/jabb-handwriting.html)
Re: Jabberwocky
Date: 2004-11-24 11:33 am (UTC)---L.
Re: Jabberwocky
Date: 2004-11-24 12:36 pm (UTC)LOL!! I've never seen that one; I've seen the famous Doonesbury strip. I owned a 110, which was older and much less ... apt at picking up handwriting. The 2000/2100 was the perfect machine. The only problem I had with it was that my handwriting quality declined in legibility over the course of its use, because it recognized my writing when I was writing quickly. I used the first version of graffiti on the 110, and also at times on the 2000, because I could use it with my eyes closed on moving vehicles; notably, I could never outwrite it on the Newton, but always outpaced it on the Palm Vx (which would cost me whole sentences).