Phones 4 me. (Do your own hand actions)

2005/06/21 18:41:00

All around the garden.

So after some years with my trusty T310, that I acquired from Brent, I have decided to blow the bonus on a new phone. And after much research and a near miss with a Nokia 6680 (Maybe next time Martin) I settled on the SonyErricson K750i. It is the best phone out there for what I wanted. I am still not happy with buying another Sony with their Memory sticks and such like that I have talked about before but I have put this aside for this little baby!

Why do I need a new phone? I hear you ask. Well there is no real justification, as ever, but I am currently carrying my phone, my mp3 player and my camera around in a bag and with this new toy I can do away with that lot and just carry the phone. It’s not a complete replacement. The camera is only 2 megapixel and the Lens is basic to say the least but the photos are the best I have seen on a phone. Storage is the other issue. I have just ordered a 1Gb Memory Stick Duo Pro ( You see even they can’t stick to one standard!) and I am going to try taking more of an iShuffle approach to music, only with a screen, and see how that goes for a bit.

Impressions so far. It’s a solid phone with a nice big screen and them menus are pretty simple. It’s been vodafoned so that means that it’s all geared to making you spend money. The games are just demos and the websites all lead to the option of buying stuff. There are all sorts of nifty vodafone live features such as making a photo into a postcard but at �3.50 per go I don’t think I will make use of that one! The music quality is not that bad from the little in the ear headphones that Sony supply which was quite a surprise and the radio works as expected, not bad if you sit still but the usual problems of a portable radio. The camera is a real surprise, while not as good as either of my other cameras it’s good enough and a load better than any phone that I have seen. Things like the panorama mode are all done on the phone. There are modes for low light, macro, timer, white balance, and even a little light for night time. The software is really nicely done things like the music only stops for a brief time while the photo is processed and to play back the “click” of photo taken, slide open the lens cap and it enters photo mode, close it and you are back to what you were doing.

Interaction with Linux. Plug in the supplied USB cable and up pops an icon on the desktop for the memory stick. Nice to see it “Just Work”(TM) Well done to all involved, including Sony!

Latest thing. Grabbing my email from gmail. I have setup the email client to pull down my email from gmail for me to read. This is going to cost a bomb! I think that Voda currently charge �2.35 per Mb! But I am sure that will change soon.

Transfering info. Multisync is fantastic. It may have a few little “features” but in the end I just set it up to sync my desktop to the phone via bluetooth and hay presto all my contacts were there. As is my calendar.

What next? Setting it up so that it’s easy to sync music to. I think that the next version of Rhythmbox should make this a lot easier but for now I guess that I can just do it using the file manager. I did think about setting it up so that I could send photos direct to flickr but I think that would be a little pricey so for now just a download. ( Note to self: Could I tag a photo on the phone so that when I plug it into my laptop it automatically posts it to flickr?). There are some video, music and picture editing utils on the phone itself which sound like fun!

Why no 3G? Cost! At least with 2.5G I will get board before I go broke!

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