Re: [LUG] OT: Mobile phone recommendations

On Sun, Nov 29, 2009 at 9:25 PM, Rob Beard <rob@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

Simon Waters wrote:

Oops - dropped my very cheap mobile phone from Orange - guess it is a
good job it was very cheap.

So recommendations of getting one that will sync nicely with Linux welcomed.

Mostly I need a phone.

Sync of contacts sensibly would be nice to have, or simply simple
back-up of contacts from mobile into a sensible format quick and simple
enough I will actually do it and restore it on the next phone.

Sensible reminders good.

Sync of calendar not important currently.

Other than that the next step of interest would be ssh terminal client,
which I'm guessing takes us to a different realm of phone?

Web browsing - well I've always thought it sucks on mobile phones, but
it would be handy if it had an ssh terminal client built in, since then
I could check web side of ssh work other than with lynx.

Email - nice to have (would need sensible IMAP client).

I have a camera so don't really need that.

I have a music player but rarely get the time to listen, so that isn't
important.

Am a sucker for games, especially if I can get (or port) a decent game
of chess to the phone, so probably best if it doesn't have that for my
productivity.

Cost - always important.

For the phone and contact sync these are very cheap these days.

Obviously would pay more for better, but prefer PAYG, as I don't phone
enough people to justify contract.

Well I'm not sure what your budget is, or if you want to stay with Orange, but I would recommend the Nokia e63. It's a 3G phone, I have on on Three. Although I have one on which was free on contract (£15 per month I think it is for 75 cross network minutes, unlimited texts and 1GB a month internet/data allowance), they also do the same phone for about £150 on PAYG.

Being a Symbian S60 phone, I have Putty on there, I can sync my calendars and contacts with Google (I haven't really looked at syncing with Linux yet, I dare say it could be done) and I can also get e-mail on my phone, albeit the e-mail client is a little basic, but it does the job.

On the other hand I believe there are some cheaper Android phones coming out, although saying that the cheapest I've seen advertised is the T-Mobile Pulse which is £180 on PAYG.

Not sure what other Nokia phones are Symbian S60, but I dare say maybe some of the cheaper Nokias out there might do the job, I just got mine because it had a full qwerty keyboard, e-mail, internet and was free on contract.

Rob

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