Maybe it is time for a new phone

Friday, June 13th, 2008 at 09:17pm

I have had my current mobile phone, a Sony Ericsson T610, for well over four years now. While it has served me well with syncing with iCal and Address Book on my PowerBook, I have needed to look up sites when away from a computer.

Although that would be possible with this phone, is isn’t practical, nor has it been cost effective.

The 3G iPhone that was announced earlier in the week changes this, as I would happily pay $199 for the 8GB model. The sticking point would be the contract options, both duration and monthly costs.

Assuming that the cost is acceptable (I currently average less than $20 so I don’t know what I would accept), could I just switch?

I think so as I could simply sync with my PowerBook where I currently have my contacts stored in Address Book and I (sort of) use iCal as my calendar. It seems that I could simply point the phone at my IMAP server and browse web sites. Photos, songs and music I don’t really care about as I would be using it as a smart phone, not a media player with phone function.

But what would that mean for the future of my PowerBook? Earlier in the year I realised that I didn’t really use it anymore, let alone need to lug it back and forth to work every day. In the situation above I would need to keep using it, purely as a place to store my calendar and address book.

As July 11 approaches more information about the costs should become available and I will, in the background, keep investigating my options.

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2 Responses to “Maybe it is time for a new phone”

  1. I’ve been through two phone updates and it was quick and easy when everything is synced with a Mac. Just add the new phone to iSync, synchronise and you’re done. The iPhone is also supported under Windows so if you’ve got a Windows machine you’re using more than the Power Book you could use that instead.

    Wes - June 15th, 2008 at 11:10 am

  2. On the Mac I use Address Book and iCal which works. The downside is that I currently use it for little more than that which makes maintaining my calendar a bit of chore. However, if I were to sync with my PC it appears that I would have use Outlook. This is not something I want to do.

    It does appear possible to sync with Yahoo! or Google for contacts, but does that still require Outlook on the PC? The information I have found about syncing Google Calendar seems to use iCal as the conduit. Can a similar thing be done with Outlook?

    Given the choice between running Outlook and only using my Mac for syncing, I would choose the Mac.

    MobileMe could be a solution, but that is an extra cost and is not under my control. My preference would be something like my email, an address book and calendar hosted on my Linux box which I can access remotely.

    These are the options that I will be investigating.

    Stephen - June 15th, 2008 at 2:41 pm