it's still not the future
I've pretty much completed my survey of phone options, and the news is not good. The Ocean's keyboard isn't very good, its browser is hopelessly neutered and it crashed twice while I was using it. The Wing is junky and also crashed while I was using it — Windows Mobile seems pretty awful. The Dash has some style and an okay keyboard, but the store clerks were wary of it. And although it's clear that it's probably underpowered (despite its custom edition of Windows Mobile seeming pretty snappy), it's hard to say exactly how that limitation would manifest itself. "Inconveniently" is my guess.
Besides, I really don't want to be forced to commit to two more years on America's slowest data network. The iPhone's beautiful, but if I were to spend that much money I'd want a less flaky keyboard, an SSH client and the ability to tether my laptop to it. I'm confident that software revisions (and perhaps an SDK) will make the device unassailably awesome, but for now I'm content to wait.
So yes, I'm a broken man — despite yesterday morning's wide-eyed telephonic optimism, I'm now trolling Craigslist and Ebay for used Sidekick 3s. The handset is a disappointment, to be sure: no maps, no video, no tethering, and Danger inexplicably makes their keyboards worse with every device revision. But it still offers the best keyboard out there, a fairly responsive and nearly-uncrashable operating system, and the promise of resuming normal Tom-phone activities until the iPhone pressures the market into making better devices. Here's to maintaining the status quo.
Comments
No OpenMoko in your future? I understand it's still largely a development device, but ... people have been complaining about the iPhone's support (or lack thereof) for a lot of the secure mail stuff here at MIT, and several people have been suggesting openmoko as an alternative. Even Richard Stallman seems reasonably impressed with how little non-open software it runs.
Nah. I think a coworker's getting one, and I'll be content to check that out. I'm already wary of being Steve Jobs' guinea pig; I'm terrified of being Richard Stallman's (or one of his acolytes, anyway).
I am sort-of-kind-of in the market for a passable Java phone that'll let me play with Mologogo and Processing Mobile, but I think the OpenMoko is a little pricey for that.
Fair enough. It's still a bit out of my price range, too.
I wouldn't worry much about Stallman, though. Given the lab email-list traffic I see, he seems too concerned with making sure that MIT isn't surveiling him to have much time to think about taking over the world -- he's constantly organizing swap-meets for empty T-passes, so that the MBTA can't track him, and he carries around a key-ring of donated ID cards so that MIT can't draw a bead on his whereabouts.
And his 'acolytes', at least around here, are suitably wary of him. He is really a clique of one, I think.
Hah... you know, when I wrote that crack I totally forgot that he was at MIT, and that you might have personal experience of the guy. Yeah, all I really meant was that, in the grand tradition of free software, conceptual beauty seems likely to be emphasized over experiential beauty, and that's not really what I want from a phone.
I bet there'll be all kinds of awesomely weird stuff for it, though. If I was in the market for a phone that could play NetHack and run an IRC bot, this is definitely the one I'd pick up.
I picked up a Treo 700p last summer when I figured iPhone was still a year away. Data over Sprint EV-DO is respectable in most cities, but the thing crashes about once a week with regular use. Probably would do so even more if I was a heavy user -- GoogleMaps is the only third party app installed.