Last summer I changed from Cingular to T-Mobile and used the Motorola Razr. When it was new, it seem like a really nice phone, but the battery life was way too short. It had a stand-by time of only two days. I’ve also been having problems charging the phone. On several occasions, the phone would not charge. I would plug in the phone to the charger, any charger, and nothing would happen, and the phone would die on the charger. Sometimes, I could plug it into the car adapter to charge the phone, but that would not always work.
Last week, I decided enough was enough. I was torn between the Blackberry Pearl and the T-Mobile Dash. I wanted to be able to handle email and moblog. The Pearl would also let me connect to the internet over the EDGE network, and there was a Mac hack which would let my PowerBook use the phone as a Bluetooth modem. The problem was that as a moblogging platform, or even a text messaging platform, it was a bad user experience. The Pearl has a hybrid numeric/QWERTY keyboard, with double letters on each of the keys. Unfortunately, it’s still hard to type quickly, and I don’t think I should have to train and adapt myself to their shortcomings.
The T-Mobile Dash worked out better. It has a QWERTY keyboard laid out in a rectangular matrix, so hunt-and-peck typing text is not as much of a problem. People complain about large fingers on tiny keys, and I don’t have much of a problem with that. The placement of the zero key below the 8 and 9 key is the biggest problem I’ve run into, because it is not where I expect it. That’s a minor shortcoming I am willing to adapt to.
It is also Windows Mobile, which means I can install applications to help with email (Gmail), navigation (Google Maps), blogging (Kablog-j2me) and chatting (Skype). All are Java MIDlets.
I spent three hours of continuous surfing, and the battery lasted about 3-1/2 hours. I need to get a handle on how well it works under normal circumstances.
However, there isn’t a way to connect to my PowerBook to the EDGE network.