tech.mchiu.com

Finding the right PDA Phone

 Now that I have a small cell phone, I now need a PDA phone.  This all started when I used to have both a Motorola RAZR and Treo 650.  The reason for both is because they both have very different purposes.  The RAZR, on the one hand, is a cool looking phone that I take out with me when I just need a phone that can make phone calls, and belt out an occassional text.  The Treo 650, on the other hand, does all of that plus it is really good for e-mail.  The RAZR is slim and easy to carry around, but the Treo is bulky and difficult to carry around.

So the RAZR gets lent to a friend, who subsequently, didn't have time to get it back to me, and now it's somewhere in Taiwan.  The Treo just had a bunch of major issues with it, and basically couldn't even make phone calls anymore, so I pretty much put that away.

Now that I have the LG CU500 to replace my RAZR, it's time for me to find another PDA phone.  I originally had my eye on the upcoming Treo 680, but it's still not here yet.  After talking about it with Kevin, and after having used the LG CU500 for a while now, I am less inclined to get a Treo 680  because it lacks support for 3G wireless.

So I had my mind set on the Cingular 8525 (aka HTC Hermes), so when I went to the Cingular website looking for it, I saw another phone that caught my eye, the Samsung BlackJack, which looks like a Moto Q clone similar to T-mobile Dash I guess... 

So looking at the specs on both, they are both 3G phones running off of UTMS/HSDPA networks, so that was a definite plus.  The Cingular 8525 is definitely bulkier than the Samsung, but the 8525 has a larger screen.  Samsung has the keyboard on the phone which I like, and the 8525 has the keyboard slide out from underneath, which makes it very difficult to text out messages with one hand while driving, which is when I need to text and e-mail the most.  So I went back and forth on different features like this, and realized that the 8525 is probably a better choice for what I need a PDA phone for.  The only thing that would have changed anything would have been if the Samsung had a touch screen... The biggest drawback for me on the MotoQ, and the same with the Samsung Blackjack, is the lack of a touchscreen... I could have done without a lot of the bells and whistles on the 8525 if the Blackjack only had a touch screen... even if it meant that it would need to increase the thickness by a little bit, I would still go for it.  Personally, I already have a phone, and phones don't have touchscreens, but I am in the market for a PDA phone, and PDAs must have touchscreens.

So in the end, I think I'm going to go with the 8525, but I guess I should play around with both a little first and see what I am more comfortable with... the Samsung is a lot cheaper though... :D