Phones, Handhelds and Other Gadgetry

Monday, July 17, 2006

Phones, Handhelds and Other Gadgetry

Back to my post that I ended up skipping a while ago: Palms. Yes, I’m crazy about all kinds of technological gadgets. Phones and handhelds are such gadgets and that’s what I want to post about now.

A while ago Alena posted that I wanted to buy the latest smartphone from Palm, Treo 700p. We actually went to the local dealer store that very day and did buy it. But before getting into the new Treo I wanted to post some history about this whole phone / PDA collection.

I’ve been spending the top dollar for the top of the lines phone since the day I could afford it. I can remember paying over $400 for now ancient Motorola V60 phone. Even though the old V60 is long out of service, the spending spree continues to this day.

My first PDA was given to me as a gift by my parents on my 21st birthday - Palm m515. Since that day I’ve got addicted to PDAs. Somewhere towards the end of 2002 my m515 was stolen, so I bought myself a new then Dell Axim (first version). As opposed to m515, which ran Palm OS, Axim ran Windows Mobile. I hated it, because of Windows and ended up selling it soon after. As a replacement I bought Palm newest at the time Tungsten T3. I managed to buy it from a store about a week before the official release. I still think that T3 is one of the best handhelds out there to date.

Since T3 had bluetooth in it, I wanted to get a good phone for it, to hook it up to the PDA. We ended up getting Motorola V600. However since since V600 was a GSM phone we switched to TMobile from Verizon (CDMA only). We only lasted with TMobile for a year, since the coverage and sound quality just doesn’t match to that of Verizon. Bought Motorola E815 phones and went back to Verizon. I managed to lose the phone about 3 months later in the snow. And at about the same time my T3 decided to die - some battery trouble.

I tried to activate my V60, but it was way too ancient at this point and it was no longer compatible with the networks. At this time Palm came out with Treo 700w - the one running Windows Mobile OS. I figured that instead of buying some crappy phone to replace my lost E815 and buying some handheld to replace T3, I’d do 2 things at once. Buy a smartphone. So I gave Windows another chance and was very disappointed as the first time.

Soon after Palm came out with Treo 700p which I ended up buying, and I’m very happy in the end. A great handheld, running Palm OS, built in phone and support for high speed wireless Internet through Verizon’s EVDO network. I can basically stream music from Internet to my phone without any interruptions.

Interestingly enough, my T3 came back to life soon after (I guess a good battery discharge fixed all the issues), and I got a call from Verizon saying that they found my lost E815 about 6 months later!

That concludes my “short” introduction into my world of gadgetry. On the picture you a see a pile of hardware that we’ve accumulated over the past years. The devices with screens on are my new Treo 700p and Alena’s Motorola E815 (which she, unlike me, never lost).

P.S. I do have Treo 700w for sale now. I’ve used it for a bit over a month and it looks brand new - not a single scratch. I have the original box with all the manuals for it. If you want it for a low price, leave a message in the comments.