Planet Geek

The Cellphone Blues.

Geekitude

Ya'll are probably tired of me yammering about phones, feel free to 'n' or '^W' or whatever you do to skip this posting.

As mentioned previously, I'm getting pretty tired of my Treo. It works okay, though it's really aging. Physically too large for the features it offers, absolutely dreadful Bluetooth support... it's really time to move on.

The problem is, the offerings are slim. In my previous posting, Matt commented regarding the Nokia N95. All in all, it looks like a fantastic phone. There's only a few small problems.

First and foremost, no one has it! It was released in europe, and there is a US version, but none of the carriers are carrying it. You can order it from Nokia, but then you have to go through the joy of getting it one of the US networks, and even then it'll only be T-Mobile or AT&T. There's some noise about a 'north american version' for lower frequency WCDMA stuff, but I'm really lost about the offerings here.

Second, it's very expensive. The lowest price I've seen is in the $595 range, and the highest I've seen is over $800. Now, granted, this things is basically a laptop in phone form. Wifi, GPS, acceleromter, 3d accelerated graphics, media player, SD slot, bluetooth, kick butt CPU, etc. The reviewers are showing people happily networking via bluetooth through it onto the data network (something Verizon actively blocks, for totally unknown reasons).

IF I knew I could order an N95, walk into an AT&T store and activate it, and IF I could get a reasonable data plan on it, so I could use it as my primary wireless 'gateway' for my laptop(s), and IF there weren't any major obstacles I'm not seeing (like, oh, there are no plans that can do SMS + Data + voice for something < $200 a month), I'd be seriously ready to do this. But there's too many unknowns, too many variables.

And. I can't find anyone in the Boston area who HAS one, so I can't even get one in my hands to play with it.

Growl!

Posted by dbs at May 23, 2008 10:42 AM