Best basic PIM Smartphone, Cheap, BB or Symbian?

[Little Bandit]

Been lurking around a while, and referenced here for a lot of my past decisions. I had a Z22 and then moved onto an Ipod Touch 3g for the past few years.

I find that I am using the Ipod Touch less and less for PIM, just because I find it so slow to enter, and don't trust the notifications. I currently use Pocket Informant on it for my calendar and tasks. It probably takes me 5-10 seconds to unlock, open PI to a point where I can view my calender, and data entry is slow as well. I also don't like that I have to open separate apps for my email, calender, etc. I would like a homescreen like the old Palm's.

I am looking for a basic smartphone with the following requirements.
~$100-200 cost with no plan
QWERTY Keyboard
WIFI (and ability to get email over wifi)
No Data plan
GPS with offline maps (nice, not a requirement)
Good battery life and call reception

I think this pretty much limits me to a Blackberry 9300 or a Nokia E71/72. I know there are severe limitations to both, but I really just want a good phone with a great calendar. Something that I can input a task or appointment in rapidly, and can review the calendar when I power up the phone.

I think the BB is out, as you apparently can't get emails etc unless you sign up for BIS, I don't really want to pay for that.

Is there anything else others can recommend? How bad is the Symbian to use? I hear the menus are horrible.

Thanks in advance.

[Adama D. Brown]

What carrier are you on? If you have AT&T or T-Mobile, you could simply buy a cheap unlocked Android phone that they don't carry, like a Motorola Milestone 2, and use that without needing a data plan.

[Little Bandit]

Thanks for the quick response.

I live in Canada, am currently with one of the small prepaid providers, but can use any Rogers phone (GSM Sim Card) with it. I am considering switching to Telus (CSMA - I think they now have GSM SIM cards as well) as that is what my wife is on, but not set on that yet.

Telus did offer me a LG Optimus 7, Windows 7 phone for free on a 1 year contract, but I still see that as more of a media-central phone as opposed to a PIM based phone.

Android was up there for me in choices, but I didn't want to spend a ton of money on it, and figure BB or Symbian may have been better than the older Android phones that are offered up here.

Where is a good place to buy unlocked phones online?


Where is a good

[Adama D. Brown]

If you want to buy unlocked phones online, eBay is probably your best bet if you don't want to pay a small fortune. Any former AT&T phone should be fine to work on Rogers or the equivalent.

[r0k]

I walked around with a BB and an iPod Touch (probably 2d gen) and found I used my BB less and less for PIM. I also have PIM but never use it. I use a Mac and I found the sync between my Mac and my 'touch to be flawless while the so-called sync to my BB was an absolute joke.

If you're looking for a keyboard smartphone, I suggest something with android. At least you are still running an OS from this century. BB has no future and Nokia is moving to Windows. Still I find myself wondering why you are considering a keyboard. Do you find text entry on the 'touch to be poor? I must admit that text entry on all my iThings leaves something to be desired but I have gotten used to it. I'm a lot more used to typing on a touchscreen than I ever would have gotten used to graffiti 2. So if you find you might live with a touchscreen, a used iPhone might be a good option for you and your PIM data would simply come across. At least it would come across if you use iCloud.

Perhaps I should share just a glimpse of how flawless sync works for me...

When I got my 'touch, it was "free" when I bought my son's Macbook Pro for college. I was hooked within 2 months and my BB was relegated to "just a phone." I was already using mobile me and I was so impressed that I could change something on my Mac, on my 'touch or in MobileMe online and it "just worked" and showed up everywhere else. When I bought my iPad, all my data was on the thing before I walked out of the Apple store. When I got my iPhone 4 in September 2010, the same was true. All my data was on the thing before I left the Apple store. When I create a memo, it "just shows up" in mail.app on my Mac. When I create a calendar entry, the same is true.

I haven't launched iPhoto in over 2 months. Tonight I decided I should launch it so it could "catch up" with all my photos. While I've been typing this, iPhoto created events for my March, April and May 2012 photos. They are all on my Mac and I never had to dig for a usb cable. I still use the cable from time to time to grab multi gigabyte movies I shot that aren't well suited for transfer via wifi but my photos just work. When I'm at a party, taking pictures with my iPhone. I can pass my iPad around and ppl can see those photos on the iPad within seconds. iCloud sync is that fast. Perhaps if you're on Windows, some of these features might not mean as much to you but I'm one of those few ppl who was using Apple computers before I got an iPhone rather than the other way around. So if there's any doubt in your mind about sticking with iOS, by all means consider a used iPhone. Only cut Pocket Informant loose. It dawg slow on every platform I've ever used it. At least on iOS, since Apple enforces that your PIM data must live in a standard location so you can use PI when you have time, but calendar and contacts can pull up the same data much more quickly.

[Drillbit]

Cheap BB or Symbian phones are no better than cheap Androids. In fact, the cheap or used Android is likely to be better. But you need to sign up for GMail to activate the Android and get push email from GMail. The HTC Sense layer found in HTC phones have good PIM qualities which also interfaces with social networks like Facebook. You can display the calendar widgets on the homescreens so you can view them without opening the app.

The interface on the Nokia E71 is kinda awful.

[Little Bandit]

I always thought that Android would work well for what I want, it has the customizable lockscreen, removable storage, and generally more open.

I already have the iPod Touch set up quite well actually. I use Gmail so my emails, contacts, and PI calendar sync up. My PI tasks sync with Toodledo. The syncing works great. There are a few other apps that I use as well (Plaintext, news, forums), and the web-browser is great.

Things I don't like about it
-No homescreen to review all important items
-Itunes
-Speed
-Its buggy, requires soft reset regularly, fine as it is just an iPod, would be unacceptable as a phone
-The fact that it is so locked down
-playlists editor (why can't I just add a song I am listening to an existing playlist?)
-I don't enjoy the touchscreen keyboard. I am an engineer, so like many on this board, am quite particular. I had to turn the auto correct off as there was just too many words that it did not know, and it was a pain to always fix it. Doesn't always switch to landscape mode either, requires a soft-reset when this happens. I could live with a touchscreen keyboard if required, but wanted to try out a QWERTY.

I really enjoy the calendar views of PI, I haven't seen anything else that gives the weekly and monthly views like it does. I also like how the tasks and calendar are shown together. Recently the alarms have not been working consistently, my alarm will beep, but no notifications will come up, so I can't tell what it was for. I have lost all confidence in it. I never used the stock calendar, as the layout never appealed to me.

Most of the things I dislike about the 'touch would be the same on an iphone.

Honestly, I think I am probably just going to Jailbreak the 'touch and keep my dumbphone. I wanted to avoid jailbreaking as I don't want something I have to screw around with, and just want something that works. I am at the point where if I lose everything on it, it wouldn't bother me that much, at least all the important stuff is backed up online.

I know that BB and Symbian lack a lot in the browser and app experience, I was hoping that the Calendar/Task/Email would work well enough to compensate for that, but it is sounding like that is not the case.

[r0k]

Just so you know iTunes is no longer a mandatory part of the iThings experience. All my iThings are backed up to iCloud NOT iTunes. iTunes is one Apple thing I can't stand. Quicktime on Windows is another. You mention frequent soft resets. This seems odd. I have never experienced a more stable mobile platform than iOS. I reset my iPhone less than 4 times a year. The walled garden gets on my nerves at times but the half a million apps fill in just about any gap I could think of. There are a handful of missing things like "mark all as read" which I had on my Blackberry and I have on my Mac but I don't have on my iThings.

I have spent more time tinkering with a cheap Android tablet over the past week than all the combined time I spent tinkering with my iOS devices. It really helps me appreciate the consistent end to end user experience the walled garden provides. For instance, in order to put my work exchange profile on my iPhone, I had to first set a complex unlock password. To do the same thing on my cheapo Android tablet was impossible because the build of Froyo on the thing is simply missing all of the screen lock related submenus and when I install third party apps to access those features they all come back and report they are not supported by the OS. What a joke. So if you do go Android, keep in mind that going for a less expensive device puts you at risk of running into the kind of issues I had on my $65 tablet. A used iPhone that is capable of running iOS 5.1.1 (3GS or later) should provide you a better experience than a low end Android device.

[Hook]

Just so you know iTunes is no longer a mandatory part of the iThings experience. All my iThings are backed up to iCloud NOT iTunes. iTunes is one Apple thing I can't stand. Quicktime on Windows is another. You mention frequent soft resets. This seems odd. I have never experienced a more stable mobile platform than iOS. I reset my iPhone less than 4 times a year. The walled garden gets on my nerves at times but the half a million apps fill in just about any gap I could think of. There are a handful of missing things like "mark all as read" which I had on my Blackberry and I have on my Mac but I don't have on my iThings.

I have spent more time tinkering with a cheap Android tablet over the past week than all the combined time I spent tinkering with my iOS devices. It really helps me appreciate the consistent end to end user experience the walled garden provides. For instance, in order to put my work exchange profile on my iPhone, I had to first set a complex unlock password. To do the same thing on my cheapo Android tablet was impossible because the build of Froyo on the thing is simply missing all of the screen lock related submenus and when I install third party apps to access those features they all come back and report they are not supported by the OS. What a joke. So if you do go Android, keep in mind that going for a less expensive device puts you at risk of running into the kind of issues I had on my $65 tablet. A used iPhone that is capable of running iOS 5.1.1 (3GS or later) should provide you a better experience than a low end Android device.

Just to be clear, you cannot compare a low end Android smartphone to a device that takes an unofficial port of Android using a version that was never officially compatible with tablets but used simply because it was open source. It's like a bad Linux port. Even low end Android smartphones have a pretty good user experience. They will tend to have lower resources --lower screen resolution, more limited memory, slower CPUs (although these days 1Ghz is low end)-- but they have largely been tweaked to account for those and are fully supported by the Android platform. So, no, don't expect such terrible things to happen with a low end Android smartphone. I wouldn't touch a cheap tablet with a resistive screen to begin with. It is not going to tell you anything about Android.

[lelisa13p]

< snip > Things I don't like about it
-Its buggy, requires soft reset regularly, fine as it is just an iPod, would be unacceptable as a phone

Most of the things I dislike about the 'touch would be the same on an iphone. < snip >

I've never had to reset my iPhones (3Gs and 4) for poor performance. Just so you know, they're not buggy & are the best phones I've ever used.

YMMV, of course, but hopefully not much.