All in one Mobile Phone / PDA / CF & SD?
James
Im not sure if any exist at the moment, but I'm looking for a high end PDA
(of similar spec to a Dell Axim x50/51v or HP4700, with a mobile phone
facility / Sim card slot built in + SD/CF card slots. Basically I am
looking to roll a Dell Axim x50v and SE K700i into one unit if possible.
Any thoughts?
Thanks
Clive
I am something similar, but with a 5mp+ camerea.
It's been going on for long enough now, all the promises of 'one' device
Decent PDA, phone and a camera that is good enough to ditch my 4mp one.
I looking for one multi purpose unit around Sep
Clive
David Hearn
You're looking for a 5 megapixel camera phone which is better than a 4mp
digital camera?
Unlikely at the moment - majority of the problems is to do with the
lenses required to get a reasonable image. People generally want phones
to be as small and light as possible. Adding adequate lenses and
sensors into phones tend to make them bigger and heavier.
I've not come across a camera phone which betters my old 2mp digital
camera - let alone a 5mp version!
D
zacnici
> You're looking for a 5 megapixel camera phone which is better than a 4mp
> digital camera?
>
> Unlikely at the moment - majority of the problems is to do with the
> lenses required to get a reasonable image. People generally want phones
> to be as small and light as possible. Adding adequate lenses and
> sensors into phones tend to make them bigger and heavier.
>
> I've not come across a camera phone which betters my old 2mp digital
> camera - let alone a 5mp version!
Amen to that.
There is never going to be the 'one' device that suits all.
What do you want the PDA for? Contacts? Email? Then an XDA, HP, Treo
type is fine.
To actually use to type documents? Then forget it, the keyboards of the
Blackberry's HP's, XDA IIs etc are not touch-typable.
You then go to the Nokia Communicator and people moan about it being
too big, because all they want to use it for is Contacts and Email and
don't need to type.
You want a decent camera? Well of course then you need an optical zoom,
a decent coated lense, a good flash for fill and also night shots, the
ability to spot meter, compensate for backlighting, zone focussing etc
etc. All of which require storage and juice, because of course you will
want to have 1,000 mp3 files, 30 to 40 hours of video as well as your
stills .. and of course video and WIFI and Bluetooth and GPS etc.
People then moan that their battery only lasts 2 days. But then they
don't want to carry around a half brick.
Now a 5 Mpixel capability is great but frankly why? Will you be
printing A3 size? I have a 4 year old Sony, 3.2 Mpixel that I regularly
use at 1,280 x 960 pixels and have printed some decent 8 x 10's but
more usually at standard 5 x 7's at a very good quality with a typical
file size of 500 to 600 KB. I use my SE k700i at 1,280 x 960 for snaps
and have a brilliant 5 x7 of my wife and myself taken with the K700i at
the top of Ayres Rock sitting in front of me, file size I think of
about 70K that I emailed from the top of Ayres Rock, cracking GPRS
signal. I also had my Sony but that picture was just great albeit not
as tecnically good as other shots taken with the Sony. I would suggest
that most people use their phone cameras for taking pix on a night out
or at the seaside. I generally just take my K700i now for snaps and it
is adequate and use my Sony for decent holiday pix etc.
I have a Jornada 720 that I bought off Ebay because I can type with it
and use Softmaker's Textmaker and Planmaker because Pocket Word is
pants and Pocket Excel does not do charts. I have a WIFI card so that I
can use it on our home network for email (I use it more for email than
my PC). Although it is more luggable than a laptop I do not carry it
everywhere. I also have an LG Phenom which has got a brilliant
keyboard, as good as a desktop, but it doesn't take WIFI or BT cards
and definitely not pocketable.
I also have an SE k700i with a dual SIM because I use 2 different SIMs
for voice and also because my 6 yr old Nokia 8210 started to have
tantrums. The camera and email are nice features and have come in
useful on holidays for emailed pics (between 30 and 70 KB, 15p to 35p
roaming on Virgin) which work out same price/cheaper than postcards and
provide a travelogue, great. But if you try sending a picture from your
5 Mp device, be prepared to wait quite a while for it to go and to
cough up a couple of quid. It's also not great for sending long emails
and cannot read attachments.
I wanted a PDA for GPS because whenever I travel anywhere I always
seemd to be diverted so bought an XDA IIs off Ebay (new, unlocked and
an unbeleievable price) that I also use for GPRS email, very minor
surfing and also some calls using another SIM. As an added bonus I have
about 25 hrs of video on a 2 Gb card, 250 or so tracks on a 1 Gb card
and about a dozen books in text format on my master 1Gb card. Very
handy as I go away a lot and it's great to read a book, listen to
music or watch a vid. Yes I can read attachments but pocket Word strips
out a lot of the formatting which Textmaker on my Jornada does not.
Pocket Excel is also not brilliant (but I must say that WM5 Excel on my
wife's Mio P350 is a vast improvement). If I had bought the XDA
before the K700i I probably would have just stuck with the XDA and a
dual SIM and not bought the K700i. I would still need my Jornada
though, I can't see myself doing a 5,000 word project using the XDA
stylus or thumbpad.
So in my book the 'one' device has a quad band (and why not make
that CDMA and edge stuff and all that techy speak), camera phone that
you can also use in Japan of 5 Mp, optical zoom, decent flash, spot
meter, zone focusssing, with easily swappable SD cards (not the mini SD
types that sit under a battery), inbuilt 100 Gb memory, BT, WIFI, IR, 7
inch transflective screen that is perfectly readable in direct sunlight
with inbuilt GPS, either a touch-typable keyboard or virtual keyboard,
video camera, push to talk, capable of being used as a DECT cordless
that weighs about 75g and has a standby time of about 300 hrs and a
talk time of 100 hrs and slips easily into a pocket.
In the future no doubt all that will be possible, but I would suggest
not in the near future.
Decide what you want as a priority and buy on that basis, or be
prepared to carry around a decent camera for proper pix and use a
camera phone or a PDA/camera/phone for snaps email etc.
Regards
Mehdi
> You're looking for a 5 megapixel camera phone which is better than a 4mp
> digital camera?
>
> Unlikely at the moment - majority of the problems is to do with the
> lenses required to get a reasonable image. People generally want phones
> to be as small and light as possible. Adding adequate lenses and
> sensors into phones tend to make them bigger and heavier.
>
> I've not come across a camera phone which betters my old 2mp digital
> camera - let alone a 5mp version!
Have a look at the kind of pictures that you can get from a Nokia N93:
<http://www.mobile-review.com/review/nokia-n93-cam-en.shtml>
Up until now i thought that cameras in phones were useless gadgets only
able to produce really crap pictures and would not improve anytime time
soon due to the constraint of the lens but i have to say that i'm impressed
with those. It surely can compete with an entry level digital camera for
people not looking for razor sharp images or really faithful colors (most
people actually). And it's a full blown PDA too with a Mini-SD card slot.
Of course it's quite bulky though.