cellphone with wifi / gps

[Graham]

I may well be heading overseas soon...
If I do, I've decided I want a cellphone with a GPS and decent map support. (Preferably free via wifi)

I currently have a nokia 6820 and find it totally adequate for my current needs. Also having a large, full qwerty keyboard that doesn't take up gobs of space is great (also you can type without looking).
I don't mind a thick phone so much, but wide / heavy phones annoy me.

And yes, I bet a number of you will suggest the iphone. I haven't used them much, but whenever I have it never clicked with me. Something to be said for a real keypad and I don't want to feel like I have to take care of it. I never feel worried that the nokia will break, even when I repeatedly drop it onto concrete, etc. Basically, I treat it terribly and it's still going strong.

I really liked the feel of a blackberry pearl I tried, but from what I can tell you can't get them with both wifi and gps :-/ (if it were possible to freely preload maps onto them from a PC, I'd reconsider)

So.. What do you recommend?

 

[Simon F]

I never feel worried that the nokia will break, even when I repeatedly drop it onto concrete, etc. Basically, I treat it terribly and it's still going strong.

The BBC Click program recently showed what I can only describe as the Nokia "phone torture chamber" and it was interesting to see how much abuse a mobile phone can stand.

[Otherwise, I can't add anything to the discussion as my phone is ultra-basic]

 

[tongue_of_colicab]

Maybe take a look at the WiMo HTC phones? Than you also got a choice from like half a dozen of full gps navigation software packages.

 

[Graham]

Maybe take a look at the WiMo HTC phones? Than you also got a choice from like half a dozen of full gps navigation software packages.

I had a look at them, but they all seem quite heavy? ~180g.. My current phone is 100g which is quite a nice weight.

I spent a few hours trawling the web looking around.. And I came across this:
http://europe.nokia.com/A41475202

If only I could figure out where it can be bought and how much it is...

 

[Mize]

To what countries? Do you want simply location GPS or turn-by-turn GPS guide capability?

 

[Mize]

The E71 unlocked is USD 340 at 125 grams and does all that even with IDLE for IMAP (push email if you server supports IDLE). No clue what it would cost in NZ.

 

[tongue_of_colicab]

I had a look at them, but they all seem quite heavy? ~180g.. My current phone is 100g which is quite a nice weight.

I spent a few hours trawling the web looking around.. And I came across this:
http://europe.nokia.com/A41475202

If only I could figure out where it can be bought and how much it is...

I've got a HTC Touch Diamond and I dont notice its in my pocket at all. If any, the weight is the last thing you will notice on this model.

 

[Ike Turner]

I've got a HTC Touch Diamond and I dont notice its in my pocket at all. If any, the weight is the last thing you will notice on this model.

XDA-Devs FTW!

 

[Graham]

How well do the Touch screen WiMo phones work? Do you still need a stylus? (I've had the odd PDA in the past and was never happy with the stylus).

I found the HTC S740, which isn't a touch screen.. But it doesn't seem to be available in NZ. The Touch Pro looks nice but it's not cheap...

I've got a HTC Touch Diamond and I dont notice its in my pocket at all. If any, the weight is the last thing you will notice on this model.

It seems the diamond is very light weight for a HTC... 110g. I guess I've been gravitating to the phones with qwerty keypads.

 

[Albuquerque]

A full slide-out QWERTY keyboard will indeed add some weight, both for the extra hardware and for the mechanics involved. As for the touch screen needing a stylus? Most of the higher models come with a stylus, but I rarely (if ever) use it. For standard UI navigation, my fingers work fine.

I have the Diamond Touch Pro (AT&T Fuze here in the states) and I absolutely love it. It's like 160g when i went to check, but the weight doesn't bother me at all. I find the extra 50g more than an acceptable tradeoff for a full 5-row slide-out QWERTY keyboard that can be stashed away when I don't want / need to use it.

I've grown to abhor phones with the keyboard layout like the Nokia you linked to earlier. I used to have a blackberry that was similar in design (7100 I think?) with each key having two characters and the phone "detecting" what you meant to type. But now that I've used the full keyboard of the HTC Hermes and now the Fuze, I'll never go back.

 

[mrcorbo]

I can fully recommend the Touch Pro (in my case it's the AT&T version Fuze). Thanks to the work of the guys at the xda-developers forum this phone is exrtremely (and easily) customizable and functional.

http://forum.xda-developers.com/forumdisplay.php?f=437 is the section for this phone ("Raphael" is the internal HTC name for the phone). Poke around there in the ROM section and see the wide variety of UIs, application loadouts and even OS versions available.

I use this Rom, BTW.

It's not necessary to use install a custom ROM to get good use out of the phone, but doing so allows you to exploit the capabilities of the hardware much more fully than the stock ROMS do and if anything my current ROM is actually more stable than the stock ROM.

 

[tongue_of_colicab]

How well do the Touch screen WiMo phones work? Do you still need a stylus? (I've had the odd PDA in the past and was never happy with the stylus).

I found the HTC S740, which isn't a touch screen.. But it doesn't seem to be available in NZ. The Touch Pro looks nice but it's not cheap...



It seems the diamond is very light weight for a HTC... 110g. I guess I've been gravitating to the phones with qwerty keypads.

The HTC phones that use the touchflow3d interface dont really need the stylus. Though not all the wimo screens are converted so in some cases using the stylis still works better but by default for daily use its pretty much finger only and if you are willing to tweak you can get it pretty much finger use only.

 

[Graham]

So a touch pro?
I didn't realise the dev scene was so big.. But then I forget it's winmo, which always seems to have a hardcore following. How significant is the difference between stock and modded? is it like a whole new phone, like a nice upgrade, more consistent, or hardly noticable?
The screen must be impressive at 640x480 for that size.

One random question.. I've read a bit about WinMo 7, which I guess is sometime this or next year, what are the chances of it working on a phone like this..?

 

[tongue_of_colicab]

Not so much I think. I'm running the latest official rom and that pretty much fixed all the performance problems of the interface. Though I have never tried a modded rom so it might offer some extra in performance.

Dont know about wimo7 but certainly there wont be a rom update from HTC for their phones so it will depend on xda and the likes on whether we'll ever see wimo7 on older devices.

 

[Mize]

Not so much I think. I'm running the latest official rom and that pretty much fixed all the performance problems of the interface. Though I have never tried a modded rom so it might offer some extra in performance.

Dont know about wimo7 but certainly there wont be a rom update from HTC for their phones so it will depend on xda and the likes on whether we'll ever see wimo7 on older devices.

HTC took the Hermes from wimo5 to 6.1 so it *is* possible. I hated both 5 and 6.1 on that phone - including a wide variety of custom ROMs - however, and haven't touched a windows phone since. I also never liked slider qwerty phones as you can't type one handed which is key for between flight messaging and email as you tromp from one terminal to the next.

 

[Zaphod]

How about the Nokia 5800? Not as hip as the iPhone, but everyone using one seems to very happy with them for both work and play.

 

[Graham]

I've been thinking over this a while. I had a chance to play round with some phones that weren't on my list, but were of similar size.

I've come to the conclusion I can sacrifice the hardware qwerty keyboard because I'm simply not going to get a comparable replacement to the 6820 without the weight going up. And I've also decided my limit is ~140g, anything above is just too heavy for my taste. While I really like the touch pro it just seems it'll be too heavy, even though I found some crazy people have got android running on it .

I'm currently looking at the newly released htc diamond2. It seems like a very nice phone. It apparently has haptic feedback on the soft keyboard too, but it's something of a risk. This thread seems to suggest it's good though.

As for the nokia 5800, I've had a chance to play with one that a friend owns, and I really didn't like it. It felt very unresponsive and it's screen really didn't seem very good at all. Didn't help she really didn't like it either and was showing me all the things wrong with it (it was a gift).

Thanks

 

[Mize]

I want the Nokia E55 but it's not out in NA yet. It has a UMTS 2100 band so I can talk in Japan which the E71 does not...it's tiny (98 g), thin and has a forward-facing camera for video VOIP. The only downside is the "half-qwerty" keyboard which I've not used...maybe I'll go E75...

 

[ban25]

Be careful with international roaming. Last time I was in Japan, my phone bill was over $500 for not that many minutes and no data. A better solution would probably be to rent something appropriate while you are abroad.

 

[Mize]

Be careful with international roaming. Last time I was in Japan, my phone bill was over $500 for not that many minutes and no data. A better solution would probably be to rent something appropriate while you are abroad.

I make few calls on the mobile when in Japan, but they are key ones (saying goodnight to the kids for example). My hotel phone is dirt cheap but being able to be reached is critical and phone rentals are a pain IMHO (especially when the company pays the phone bill).

Also, local SIMs often have great rates so I tend to go unlocked.