New cell phone

To those of you who have made fun of my cell phone, you will be happy to hear that I have a new cell phone now.  It took a while to figure out what I wanted to do.  I was initially leaning towards the Blackberry Bold.  But due to it’s not being available from T-Mobile…and…well…it sucking…I decided against it.  Then there was the Blackberry Pearl Flip.  It was escentially a Blackberry Pearl, but they turned it into a flip phone.  I was initially against it because it looked really bulky.  But as I looked it over more, it kind of grew on me.  It wasn’t as big as I had expected.  Finally, there was the G1 from T-mobile and Google.  It’s an HTC phone.  I wasn’t quite sure about this one.  I really didn’t want to go with a tuoch screen, and I didn’t know how I would like the screen flipping out.

Alright, first the BB Flip.  All in all, a decent phone.  Has a nice little clock on the front of the flip, which is nice because since for whatever reason I don’t have a watch, I am constently checking my phone.  However, after about 10 seconds it turns off, so that doesn’t really help me.  But otherwise, it is a typical BB phone.  The one thing that I did not like at all was the keyboard.  It was in a QWERTY layout (like a computer keyboard), but they put two letters on one button.  QW on one, ER, TY, etc.  They also incorporated other symbols and numbers onto the keys.  For texting, it is rather smart in figuring out what you are trying to type.  That’s not the issue.  It was just weird trying to figure it out.

As for the G1, the biggest downside for me really was the touch screen.  I didn’t really want to get one like that.  I’m not sure why though.  Probably because I hate finger prints on my stuff.  But it did have a regular QWERTY keyboard.  Otherwise, it’s a nice phone.  The built in gmail feature is nice.  I get all my emails right away.  And the google maps feature is fantastic.  I have heard it has GPS, but I have yet to try that out.  The web browser is nice as well.

So after standing in the show room for a while, I decided to go with the G1.  Aside from the keyboard thing on the BB and the touchscreen on the G1 (which kind of cancelled each other out), the real deal breaker for me was the email.  I don’t need to connect to an exchange server.  Which essentially make the BB useless to me.  My primary email is my gmail account.  So it made sense to go with one that had that email service already build in.

This phone is really nice.  The touch screen is growing on me, but I’m not gonna start comparing it to other touch screen phones.  Primarily because I don’t really care that they can do stuff different that this one.  If I cared, I would have got them.  I liked this one.  Anyway, built in google maps.  Awesome.  I love that part.  Build in web.  Makes it easy to find stuff.  The camera in it is pretty nice too.  Has an auto focus thing in it.  Kinda cool.  It’s pretty much like all your other media phones.  Music, movies, pictures can all be shown.  Games can be downloaded.  IM through AIM, Yahoo, MSN and gmail.

The Andriod platform…I haven’t really read up on this.  I know that it is an open-source thing.  So there are a lot of people out there developing stuff for it.  There is one program that allows you to use your camera to scan a barcode of an item at a store, then it will tell you where it is cheapest to find it.  I think with a little tuning, that program will be very nice.

Anyway, thats all for now.  I’m still messing with the phone right, so I’m sure there will be a lot more things coming down the way.