What mobile phone should I get if I liked having the P800?

March 1, 2008 1:23 AM

Please help me choose a new phone to replace my beloved dead P800.

Okay, so the P800 is the phone I grew to love slowly. I got it accidentally, meaning to get a different Sony Ericsson but bound by my ebay bid to purchase it. Over time, though, I grew to love all of its PDA weirdness: the stylus, the cut and pasting weirdness, the excellent iSync integration, the Calendar, the three alarms, etc.

Now that my P800 has finally died I need a new phone. Ideally it will have nearly all of the features that the P800 did:

• 3 alarms - I find this to be *very* useful
• Really strong calendar--most phones seem to have a pretty wimply version. Ideally has a separate date/time for alarm, plus a Notes field, all of which should show up in iCal after syncing
• Copy and paste -- so I can copy text and numbers from notes to address book to the number dialer

Here are ways that the phone ideally would surpass the P800:

• Decent camera quality
• Ability to use MP3s for ringtone and alarm -- plus a decent amount of storage space, so I can actually fit a podcast on there
• smart typing (word completion)
• Total iSync compatibility via Bluetooth

I'd actually like the new phone to not be stylus based, that's one thing that drove me crazy about the phone, and I was always afraid that I would lose the stylus (and did, once -- fortunately there was a backup). I don't care about games, internet, email, or video. Ideally I would like this to be a phone that is a year or two old, so I can buy it on ebay and save a bit of cash. Oh, and did I mention I have a firm budget of $150 or less?

This is going to run on the AT&T network, so I guess I'm in the market for a GSM phone, although I guess there is a difference between the European and American versions?

Yeah, I know, another impossible AskMe question. Well, thank you all for your help! I lay myself before the hive mind once again.

posted by Deathalicious to Shopping (6 answers total)

If you came to like the P800, i'd suggest going with another sony ericsson uiq (symbian uiq is the operation system that powered your P800). I would not by the P990i, because I personaly find it teribly slow and somehow not pleasant to use. The P1i may be a good Choice but to expensive I guess.
Sony Ericsson just announced two half-smarthpones at 3GSM last month the G700 and G900.
They seem perfectly suited for you.
They are very consumer friendly, have a nice number keyboard, a d-pad (for those times you don't want to use a stylus or finger)
They seem to have a way nicer interface (think iphone) than the older sony ericsson touchscreen phones, especialy for finger based usage.
a camera with 3,2 megapixel on the G700 (which may suite your price range way better).
The g900 is the same as G700 but bigger and with 5 mpx Camera and wifi.
Sony Ericsson toutes those phones as personal organizers, which seems exactly what you want.
The only problem would be an expected realese date of Q2 which means you'd have to wait a few months to get one.
Here is a link:
http://www.intomobile.com/2008/02/22/sony-ericsson-g700-and-g900-demo-video-from-mobile-world-congress.html
posted by kall at 1:41 AM on March 1, 2008

Just to point out-- the P1i only 900/1800/1900, so will most likely not work terrifically well in the US. I've considered getting a number of the later Sony symbian phones, but have been put off because they don't have a version that is 850 Mhz.
posted by gregvr at 4:05 AM on March 1, 2008

I've recently changed to a HTC touch, and after initial reservations have come to love it.

Strong points:

* Slim and light
* Good battery life
* Easy to operate
* Touch screen and stylus with several flavours of handwriting recognition. Has word completion.
* Fully featured applications and a good market of 3rd party apps. (Includes rich calendar, alarms, web-browsing.)
* Big screen for its size. Most of the face is the screen.
* Surprisingly good camera. I use it for spur-of-the-moment pics all the time.
* MP3s everywhere - listen to, use as ring tones, etc.

Now the bad stuff:

* It's WinMobile. It turns out I don't hate this as much as I thought I would and it actually seems easier to use than the Symbian that ran on my previous SonyErricson 910.
* Syncing is via Missing Sync. This could be a deal-killer.
posted by outlier at 5:51 AM on March 1, 2008

Response by poster: Long awaited update:

So, I went with the Sony Ericsson z310a. As it happens, there was a special deal and I was able to get a refurbished model for just $30.

The things it does that I like:

• Five alarms
• Pretty decent calendar system
• Copy and paste
• Nice note-taking system
• t9 texting
• Java apps

Things I'm not crazy about:

• Photos still pretty lousy
• Interface slow with keyboard -- using a stylus is much faster for this
• No built in iSync -- you can either hack iSync yourself or just get the £1.50 Feisar iSync plugin I got the plugin and it worked fine.
• Even less storage space than my old phone, and no expansion!
• Appears to be no way to disable network access, so a couple of times I got dinged for a nickel or two since I pay for everything (I'm on pay as you go).

Ultimately, I have to come to terms with the fact that I'm just not willing to put the $100+ it costs to get a really decent cell phone. For me to get one with all of the features I'd really like would probably be $200 or more. It would be nice if I could get a camera that took really nice photos and could hold a podcast AND have the productivity features I really need, like a good calendar, alarm clocks, and syncing.
posted by Deathalicious at 6:38 PM on April 1, 2008

Thanks for the update!
posted by Juniper Toast at 7:13 PM on April 1, 2008

Response by poster: Another bad feature of pretty much every non-UIQ phone by Sony Ericsson is its nearly inaudible alert tone for calendar alerts. It's close to worthless. You're only going to hear it if you happen to be on the phone when one of your alerts comes up. Very, very frustrating...calendar was a key feature of my phone, and the lousy alert tone renders it practically useless.
posted by Deathalicious at 4:18 PM on August 26, 2008