stedavies.com - communications consultant

I’ve been after getting my hands on a good mobile phone now for quite some time. Mainly for four reasons:

1. I wanted a contract phone. I was on Pay as You Go and was shelling out a fortune for the privilege.
2. I want a phone with a decent camera as I’ve installed a WordPress plugin that will let me moblog.
3. I wanted to check my Gmail account while out and about.
4. I wanted to access my favourite RSS feeds while on the move

Let me tell you, choosing a mobile phone is a minefield! Four well known mobile companies I visited didn’t have a clue about Gmail, web browsing or anything remotely technical. Well at least their assistants didn’t, and I thought they’re supposed to be the experts!

So after much humming and hawing, I decided to leave my current provider, T-Mobile and move to Orange. The phone that I eventually bought is the SPV C550. A Smartphone with email, web browser, MSN Messenger, Outlook synchronisation and a 1.3 mega pixel camera and video camera.

After a little toying with it last night and today, I’m pretty impressed. The ease of use is pretty simple and the applications come in very handy.

Reading Gmail

Checking my Gmail account was the first thing I tried. There are three methods to do this: Either by using the browser, or setting up Gmail’s pop3 and smtp access, or using a wap site I found on the Internet.

I tried all three with no success. You can actually log into your account using the browser but it’s a bit of a pain. The screen on the SPV is not huge and it was like accessing a normal size web page on a small screen. So I tried logging in with Gmail’s pop3 and smtp access points but turns out Smartphones use IMAP4 with access points and Gmail doesn’t support it as of yet, but is planning to. I also tried the wap site but still no luck!

What I did find though, that there are a few sites out there that cater for this and have come up with their own mobile Gmail sites. When you log onto the site through your Smartphone, everything has been condensed so it fits perfectly on the phone’s screen. One slight little problem though, when I read a message and then tried to reply, it kept logging me out for some strange reason. So yes, I can read my Gmail but alas, I can’t reply.

Reading RSS feeds

A good review on the Micropersuasion blog prompted me to try the java mobile RSS aggregator FreeNews, and no before you ask, it’s not free. But it is very quick, easy and efficient. I’m using the week free trial and very tempted to buy it for the year. $20 for a year’s subscription – not bad at all really. The great thing about it is, it doesn’t give you the full feed but more of an excerpt, but if you decide you want to read it in full, you can download the full article. Great for saving on download costs.

I’m very tempted to purchase the Newsgator mobile edition. I access my feeds via Newsgator and FeedDemon, so synchronisation would be very handy, but after a Google search there are some reports of it running slow. Remember gang! Time is of the essence!
Perhaps I will try it, it’s $30 but with a two week trial also.

Browsing

Haven’t really surfed using the phone a great deal yet, but I’ve found one or two interesting sites. Did you know Google has a mobile search site? I didn’t, but I’ve been using it and it’s pretty cool. Currently in BETA, it condenses websites down so they are just plain text. You can access blogs by it. Here is mine.

Camera

Haven’t tested it as of yet, so not sure what it will be like for moblogging, but it’s looking promising.

There’s also Windows Media Player 10 installed but again, haven’t really had a chance to play around with it yet. It would be great if it can hold a decent amount of songs. Say 50, for short journeys when you don’t really need your iPod and taking it would be one more thing to stick in your pockets.

One downside – it has Windows Mobile 2003 installed even though the 5.0 version is due out soon. A possible upgrade could be on the cards soon?

In a perfect world

It would be able to synch with iTunes, a 4GB memory for music and podcast. Some sort of Skype enablement for free or cheaper calls, and sending messages from Gmail would be a cinch.

Technorati tags:
spv, spv550, smartphone,