Archive for the ‘S60’ Category
Folēo thoughts
Infosync called it an ‘Underwhelming’ announcement (later changing its tune), while other sources have been even less charitable. Bluntly — if you don’t remember qwk packets, you don’t know how good you have it.
Friends and I have spent years pondering mobile panacea. Often while spending good money looking for it. Michael has had two palm organisers. I have had a Psion Revo+, a couple of S60 phones with an S40 in the middle. My current E61 is the best compromise I’ve used. But it is a compromise.
Back when I used the Revo+, I marveled at just how friendly and sorted it was. Despite being an aged device, it would recognize my IR Nokia, sync phonebooks and send SMS. It had a usable keyboard and even had Opera, albeit unusably slow. Still, it did connect via IR and EDGE to the internet and if only it had a colour screen, a bit more juice, Bluetooth and an SD slot, I’d be set.
The Revo+ died, and with it died the only (IMO) usable pda/handheld I had ever used. It still starts up with some charging, but doesn’t hold charge reliably enough to use. It was a 33mhz device with apps that ran snappier and more usably than my QVGA, 200 mhz, WiFi-enabled smartphone. Before we bought the MacBook, we tried very hard to find a subnotebook-type device that would do word processing and email for a decent price, but there was nothing around.
By now it should be clear that I like the Folēo. It is an idea whose time has come and gone, but a good idea it is. I can’t think of very many mobile use-cases that would not be satisfied with a Folēo and a 3G phone. Instant on, full (mostly) web, email and documents. With Google Docs, i dont even need local storage! I wrote about being disconnected from data earlier. This is a combination that I think would make disconnection work. It remains to be seen if the Folēo has enough horsepower to be a PMP-like device, but I probably wouldn’t use a 10-inch MP3 player anyway.
So you can have your E61, Blackberry, Dash, TyTn, whatever. Everything phone-sized will always be a compromise of screen and keyboard. Just split your devices and you don’t have to deal. At $500 the Folēo isn’t cheap, but compared to the near-$400 phone I typed this on, it compares OK for what it is. You can probably have a Folēo and a 3G phone for under $700 — a lot of money, but it would fit so well in my bag.
Now I will go massage my wrists and thumbs.
