1/13/2007
Treo busted!
Well unfortunately last night, my Treo 650 fell out of my jacket pocket on to the pavement. The battery cover and battery went flying - no big deal as that’s happened before and it’s easily put back. The bigger problem is that the little stubby antenna snapped off. Now the reception is really, really sporadic. I can get service in some spots but not in a lot of others that previously worked, like the inside of my house. I guess I could get a little Torx bit and open it up and then see if it can be reconnected with solder and glue, but maybe this is a good excuse to upgrade!
I briefly looked at some of the new GSM phones, such as the Samsung Blackjack, Motorola Q, and the Blackberry Pearl, but the one that seemed to have the best set of features for me was the Cingular 8525. 3G (UMTS/HSDPA), Wi-fi, Bluetooth 2.0, A2DP, 2 megapixel camera, and a Mini-USB port for charging. I haven’t yet gone to a store to check out these phones in person, though, and it’s quite possible that my preference will change a lot after I do that.
I guess there’s the iPhone too, but I don’t know how I feel about a device that is all touchscreen and no buttons. I’m tactile. I like buttons.
Any others I should look at?
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I’m shopping around for a smartphone as well. My plan is to drop my home internet service and use the phone. When I get near my linux box, I want it to connect to the phone via bluetooth, connect to the internet via EDGE (or whatever), create an access point and forward all my calls to my skype account. I don’t need my connection at home to be extremely fast, 150-200kbps should do it. That’s the only way I can justify giving $110 month to Cingular.
I think the Blackjack requires that you plug a USB cable from the phone to your laptop to connect to the internet. Since Bluetooth 2.0 is something like 2 Mbits/sec, there’s no way I’m going to mess with a cable.
[...] A few days ago, my Treo 650 fell on to pavement and the antenna snapped off. I ordered a new short antenna from TreoAntenna.com but in the meantime, I’ve managed to get good reception by clipping an alligator clip with a short length of wire on to the point on the circuit board where the antenna connects. Originally, I had the other clip connected to the antenna itself, but it fell off and I realized that reception was just as good without it. [...]
[...] As previously mentioned, my Treo 650 antenna broke and for the past week I’ve been using it with an improvised antenna using an alligator clip. [...]