What’s the next step?
For years I’ve used the Palm as a laptop replacement. As tempting as the convergence devices may have been, I kept to a separate phone and palmtop, and relied on cables or Bluetooth to keep them in touch.
In the last couple of years I’ve found myself using SMS messaging more and more. It’s main advantage is that it takes little dedicated attention with much less overhead than a quick cell call. Coordinating plans, checking schedules, touching base can be done without all the mammalian handshaking involved with establishing voice communications (“Hello? Oh, hi Sally. What’s up?”).
That leaves me at a bit of a disadvantage with my setup. First, I reluctantly had to concede that a thumboard (like on a Treo or Blackberry) is faster than Graffiti. As fast as I’ve learned to become on Graffiti, I can beat my own times on a thumboard without all the learning and experience. Yes, it was me who said that a handheld computer without a thumboard is like a birthday party without an outbreak of the flesh-eating virus, but I think that my next device will have a built-in miniature keyboard.
The next disadvantage is that establishing a Bluetooth connection between my phone and my Palm takes several seconds. It’s not a dealbreaker for checking email or looking up something on the Intarweb, but for messaging, it fragments the process. First, a message comes in on the phone. Downloading it to the Palm takes several seconds and more attention than just pushing the button. Usually what I end up doing is reading incoming messages on the phone and then composing my replies and other outgoing messages on the Palm, where I have Graffiti, which is much much faster and less frustrating than using a numeric keypad to type text. But if I’m walking down the street (or in any number of situations), juggling two devices is awkward. Often I end up just using the phone.
Finally, I do now have a laptop, which changes the range of my needs for a palmtop as a laptop replacement. If I want to sit down and write on the Palm, I either have to use Graffiti or my fold-out portable keyboard. Again, both are reasonable solutions, but more stuff to carry.
So it looks like a convergence device is in my future. I’m pretty much broke right now and I don’t get to take advantage of discounted phones with the signing of a new service contract until March or April, so I’m doing the research.
First, I’m prejudiced toward the Palm platform. I have a lot of investment in PalmOS, both in terms of familiarity and software. So the Treos look pretty good. I’m somewhat concerned about the future of PalmOS, as even Palm seems hesitant to put it on the new devices. There’s a good reason for that, too. PalmOS doesn’t really multitask, which makes it unsuited for handling multiple, well, tasks. One might well want to check movie listings while talking on the phone. The next generation of PalmOS is promised to be a Linux-based kernel, but that gives me a whole other set of concerns. How long will it take for this new OS to iron out the bugs, and how well will my existing software run on it? Still, if Palm offered a device with the current OS and HSDPA wireless broadband, I’d live with it.
What are the other options?
Blackberry gets great reviews from everyone I’ve talked with. The word everyone seems to use is “Bulletproof.” The comparison between BlackberryOS and PalmOS today is much like the comparison of the Palm Pilot with the Newton back in 1997: it’s the stable single-function platform versus the full-fledged operating system with software support. So my concerns about Blackberry are basically about applications: Office document support, games, web browsing, financial tracking and so on.
Windows Mobile? I have too much history of being baffled and disappointed by the various iterations of WinCE. Every time I hear that the new version is finally much better I try it out and it still is the horrible clunky, counterintuitive, buggy, and not all that useful system, but with prettier colors. No one ever lost their job buying Microsoft, right? But I’ve totally lost confidence that Microsoft will ever have anything worthwhile on the Palmtop/smartphone front.
The only other thing to consider here is a Symbian device, like the Nokia 9300. I’m intrigued by the form factor, although it does seem a bit big and clunky to fit in one’s hand. The main advantage seems to be that the device could be rested on a tabletop or held in hand. Symbian has versions of Documents to Go and eReader, so documents and books should be OK. I’m skeptical that the PDA function is as complete as PalmOS’s built-in Contacts and Calendar (although perhaps Agendus for Symbian will address that), but I’ve been very happy with the voice quality of all the Nokia phones I’ve had, and voice quality is very important to a guy who is losing his high-frequency hearing.
No matter what, it looks like I have one significant compromise coming up: I’m losing screen real estate. My Tungsten T3 has a 320×480 screen which is great for reading ebooks. A convergence device will cut that down significantly. I liked ebooks on my 160×160 grayscale Palm III, so I should be able to live with a small setback in resolution and size, but it’s still a disappointment.
Thankfully I don’t have to make a decision right now, but it is coming up in a few months. My Tungsten T3 is showing signs that the battery will fail on me, so I don’t think I can put off the replacement forever. If I had to do the replacement very soon, I’d be very tempted by the Treo 680 which is supposed to be out shortly. Still, hopefully if I wait around I can get a device with the faster HSDPA service. EDGE is much better than plain GPRS (and is probably even better when not buffered through a Bluetooth connection) but it can still be frustratingly slow.
