The Smartphone conundrum

Actually flip phones are rare in the world of SPs. The only models are the two Mio-s and the two Moto-s. All other SPs are straight, afaik. And the next Moto SP, the "Q", is also straight, but with thumbboard, sorta like Treo but much thinner and narrower. However that model is delayed yet again, so it might take a few more months. If it's ever released in BC with a reasonable price (even with contract) I would seriously consider it.

Hmm I never thought about presbyopia. Now that you mentioned it, I understand your difficulty. My parents (especially dad) once commented on my SP's large screen size, because most phones have much smaller screen sizes. All they read on their cellphones is the numbers they are dialing, and that happens to be in huge fonts on my SP. Also, like most flip phones, the keys are large compared to straight phones. I find reading SMS also much easier than on phones with smaller screens. But I'd imagine the Tungsten W is even better

I actually haven't played many games on the SP. I do have SPVMan always in my storage though. It's a Pacman clone that is very faithful to the original arcade release, and it's free. Another one to recommend is gnuboy SP, which is a Color Gameboy emulator. It works fine on my Mio, but with a problem with the menu button so I cannot pause or exit the software Not sure if it's fast enough with the Moto's CPU though. Mine has an Intel PXA262, but I think yours has a TI OMAP.

I badly want a Treo 700w or Cingular 8125, but I just purchased a w600i

haha, really? i always used my normal dumb phones with both of my hands... lol. once i realized i could use it with one hand but it was uncomfortable for me so i went back to two handed mode..

Tak, yes the W screen is hard to beat for clarity and size.

I find the OMAP is OK for Mp3s and a small video I played but I can't comment yet on gaming.

Once I've flashed my Moto with a sp2002 image any comparison I make between it and my W will be a little fairer, as the Moto WM5 is beta and buggy as I read.

I am *very* keen on giving the Moto a workout and on paper SPs do have a lot of features. Given the Moto has music and the W doesn't is quite an edge. Time will tell.

I have an MPx200 flashed with WM2003 on it (just look around on the net for a guide), and I have to say that of all my WinCE devices, it is the one I use the most, if only because I carry it with me nearly everywhere.

It serves as a great companion to my Izzi Pro, but actually handles multimedia much better. Not only does it have many of the most-used programs I have on my H/PC (TCPMP, AvantGo, Mobipocket, WMP), synchronization via WMP10 means I just pick it up from its cradle in the morning and I have audio and video podcasts to go. If I want to catch a TV show I recorded, it is easy to re-encode, sync and playback on the fly because its processor can handle it. Yes, the screen is small, but that is an acceptable sacrifice for the convenience.

My H/PC is still used for data entry because a full sized keyboard is much easier than T9 (although it can still be done!), a 640x480 screen is much better for viewing documents on that a 176x220 one, and my phone does not have any Pocket Office programs (apart from PTab - an Excel compatible spreadsheet I use as my log book). That said, most of the current WM5 smartphones have pin-sharp QVGA screens which would be an improvement.

Back to the original question: I could never go back to a "dumb" phone! I am already eyeing the HTC Star Trek as my next phone!

now you can see why i love my bsquare phone!

does everything your SP does and more and all that on a full VGA 4" screen.

I am as much a fan of convergence as anyone, but there are certain things which I look for in a phone which are essential. One of these is that, since I take it with me everywhere, it needs to be small enough to fit into a trouser pocket. On the other hand, for extended data entry it is much better to have a full-sized keyboard and a larger screen. Unfortunately, the requirements of "small" for phone and "large" for handheld are currently mutally exclusive, so I have 2 devices - and don't feel like I am a traitor to the H/PC cause by doing so!

I did consider the BSquare handheld but it was a little too big for me to carry around, and the keys too small to use for touch typing - falling between two stools as it were. I agree that the VGA screen is lovely though, but if I were to go down that route I think I would go for an HTC Universal instead - and that would be traitorous!

sure, valid points...

why i didn't choose a SP then.. my lifestyle is a little different, i often wear stuff without any pockets so i must have a handbag with me all the time, so why not the bsquare hehe. and the keyboard is much better than a plain phone numpad.
htc universal is nice (i tried it for 1 day) but too expensive to be just my phone-pda. if it could replace the hpc i'd buy it at the price, but it can't so i'll wait.

hey no it would not be traitorous. really, why would it be such a big problem if you had a ppc too (along with a hpc hehe). just don't forget it isn't natively vga unlike the bsquare. (you need to install the vga hack)

That's a little bit misleading. You don't need to install VGA hack. It only runs double-pixel for software that are not designed for VGA, meaning old software. The newer software that support VGA PPC are displayed with all pixels.

ZSX,
The Star Trek looks nice and has a lot of fandom already, but there's a huge problem: it uses MicroSD, and guess where it's located? Under the battery? Yes... and worse! It's under the SIM card which is under the battery! So you have to remove both to get to the memory card. That has got to be the stupidest design I've ever seen. I'd rather keep my Mio than to get the Star Trek

Yes the Moto Q uses MiniSD, which is only slightly better than MicroSD, but at least it's accessible from the side. I take my SD card out of the Mio SP all the time, mainly to transfer pictures I've taken, and sometimes transferring media files to it.

Another thing is that I want to have WiFi on the SP, even if I need to use an add-on. The idea is mainly for sync'ing AvantGo or do some quick 'net lookup at freespots (I'm cheap so I don't use GPRS). I don't know if Q will have built-in WiFi (prolly not) but I hope the MicroSD WiFi card will work on it (more likely... maybe 50% chance).

BTW here's the Q current webpage:
http://www.motorola.com/motoinfo/product/details/0,,113,00.html

Takwu,

I think you have hit the nail on the head. The reason I have not upgraded my battered MPx200 till now is that it takes cheap and hot-swappable SD cards.

I have a 1GB card in mine which I previouly also used as a plug-n-play thumb drive (with a USB reader), and so the hot-swap-ability was really quite important.

However, as I now have a dedicated thumb drive, this is no longer required. So, although modern phones seem to be set up so you can't easily take the flash card out, this is becoming less and less of an issue for me. ActiveSync and the sync feature of WMP10 seem to cover most bases in terms of what files I need to shuttle back and forth between PC and phone.

As always there is inevitaby a toss up between size and functionality. The Q does look good, but it does't quite hit the sweet spot for me, although it may for others. For that size device I would expect at least a PPCPE OS (sacrilege!)

I'll admit the talk about SPs and the mpx200 have me interested, very much so.

My ISP is still crap so finding the SP2002 rom image is a moot point for now. When I do is there anything I need to know before I try to flash it into my Moto?

I'll admit the talk about SPs and the mpx200 have me interested, very much so.

My ISP is still crap so finding the SP2002 rom image is a moot point for now. When I do is there anything I need to know before I try to flash it into my Moto?

I'll admit the talk about SPs and the mpx200 have me interested, very much so.

My ISP is still crap so finding the SP2002 rom image is a moot point for now. When I do is there anything I need to know before I try to flash it into my Moto?

I'll admit the talk about SPs and the mpx200 have me interested, very much so.

My ISP is still crap so finding the SP2002 rom image is a moot point for now. When I do is there anything I need to know before I try to flash it into my Moto?

I'll admit the talk about SPs and the mpx200 have me interested, very much so.

My ISP is still crap so finding the SP2002 rom image is a moot point for now. When I do is there anything I need to know before I try to flash it into my Moto?