Friday, May 21, 2010

Future, Here We Come!

Dear Lazyweb,

It's time to take the smartphone plunge. While I read engadget, the sheer quantity of posts on phones makes it very hard to keep up. My needs are pretty simple.
  1. It must have a keyboard.
  2. It must have some way of connecting to a corporate exchange account (There are apps for this on Android; the iPhone works but see need #1; RIM phones work as well; not sure about palm webOS or WinMo 7)
Earlier I was tempted by the Motorola Droid, but it took forever to get Android 2.1 onto that phone and presumably the same will be true of 2.2. So what should I do? Get the LG Ally, even though it's being marketed with Iron Man 2? Go for the Droid anyway? Wait a while (how long?) for a phone to be released that has Froyo out of the box? Other options?

6 comments:

JR said...

The keyboard on the Droid sucks. I still prefer it to typing on a virtual keyboard (much faster) but miskeys are an issue even after months of use.

The google mail client is also not perfect; attaching documents other than pics/vids can't be done without 3rd party software as far as I know. I don't know about corporate exchange, but it seems to me that if it's important to you, you probably be better off going with a blackberry.

The Droid is fantastic when it comes to the Google products: maps, navigation, talk, voice etc. But I'm not sure it would be my choice if I had to rely on it for business purposes.

Tom R said...

Depends on how corporate-friendly it needs to be. At work folks use Android and iPhones, but Blackberry is still the only officially sanctioned one due to support for pushing policy to the phone, or so.

Raven Onthill said...

I believe you can use a Bluetooth keyboard with an iPhone, so don't write that off quite yet. Would perhaps an iPad do? Or do you need something pocketable

Nick Beaudrot said...

Okay, I checked on this and at this point the six major smartphone operating systems -- RIM, WebOS, Palm, Android, WinMo 7, and iPhone -- are all "supported" for a sufficient level of support that I'm okay with it. So it's just about what's the best user experience.

Nick Beaudrot said...

The Raven:

This is to replace my phone, so I need something pocketable. If there's a keyboard attachment to the iPhone maybe that's an option.

Dennis said...

Why so insistent on the real keyboard? With The Raven, I'd say that you will be able to get an iphone bluetooth keyboard, but not soon and not to carry about with you. I've found virtual keyboards plenty good enough, but YMMV of course. If you need the keyboard, I'd say to pick your favorite android.