Cheap hackable cell phone?

June 1, 2007 12:05 PM

It occurred to me that I could probably find a used cell phone cheap that would be more useful and fun than my aging mono palm, and sync with my mac. I am looking for recommendations for phones in the $50 range (on ebay) that take adequate pictures and can perhaps play fun little Java games. I don't plan to use the actual phone to make calls, I just want a cheap calendar/camera/game doohickey.

After a little research it appears the following phones will sync nicely with my macbook (which has bluetooth):

nokia 3650
Sony Ericsson T630
Sony Ericsson T637
Sony s710a
Motorola phones

I am just clueless about cell phones and which can use Java, etc. Thank you! Bonus points if the phone takes an SD memory card or is sorta hackable.

posted by mecran01 to computers & internet (9 comments total)

Um ... will most phones run without a valid SIM (or some SIM at all) in them? I don't think that my Motorola will; it just gives an error message, and doesn't do anything.

Unless you have a spare, old SIM sitting around, buying a phone off of eBay may not let you do much.
posted by Kadin2048 at 12:10 PM on June 1, 2007 [1 favorite]

Since you have a palm already, I think you should go for a treo. As a palm device, it is fairly hackable and you can get tetris for it.
posted by shothotbot at 12:21 PM on June 1, 2007

Treos are great, but not cheap, unfortunately.

Kadin-etc. thanks for the info on the sim. I didn't know that.
posted by mecran01 at 12:26 PM on June 1, 2007

You are not planning on using the phone as a phone, so go for a used color palm device.
posted by yohko at 12:32 PM on June 1, 2007

I picked up my treo 270(color, 16mb memory, keyboarded Palm/phone) for $50 on eBay a while back - There's several like this one Buy-It-Now for $50 +$15S&H,
posted by Orb2069 at 1:42 PM on June 1, 2007 [1 favorite]

My Sony Ericsson w600i syncs beautifully with my Mac, but sadly, demands I insert a SmartChip when I attempt to use it without one.
posted by roger ackroyd at 2:00 PM on June 1, 2007

Razr V3xx can be used sim-less if you change one of the seems. Lots of hacking info on Razr's out there too
posted by thilmony at 3:32 PM on June 1, 2007

My Nokia 6103 is the best phone I have yet owned, and far from the most expensive. It is incredibly durable (and I am brutal on phones), sounds great, takes decent pictures (not a feature I care much about, YMMV), has a nice feature set, syncs perfectly with my macbook/osx 10.4/bluetooth, and cost me $30 with a t-mobile contract extension. It also has built in IM and a web browser that sort of works, also features I don't use. But the sound is gorgeous and the sync effortless. I love it.
posted by spitbull at 2:15 PM on June 2, 2007

Oh, but it does require a SIM card. Sorry I missed that.
posted by spitbull at 2:17 PM on June 2, 2007