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Smartphone Decision for Young Programmer?

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Re: Smartphone Decision for Young Programmer?

#21

Post by alnayyir »

etfb wrote: post #11

I had a Nokia N70 before I got my N95, and the N95 is definitely must faster (less "laggy") but still not perfect. The quality is fine, and I can't think of many features it doesn't have. If you want a good, solid, reliable phone, the N95 is the best thing I've ever seen from Nokia, and I place Nokia at the top of the list for mobiles. As for something you can hack -- I don't know. I gather there are options for the…

While I'm not a partisan, and value trying to be as even-handed as possible in evaluating situations, I hand Microsoft the torch in the case of mobile. They've been far more fair, open, and straight-forward with Windows Mobile and the APIs.

Bonus points that I use Windows dev platforms on a regular basis, so it would be fairly trivial for me to deploy on a windows mobile phone.

Still bouncing around the ideas I'm seeing.

Re: Smartphone Decision for Young Programmer?

#22

Post by alnayyir »

christefano wrote: post #19

It doesn't meet your criteria, but I recommend the Palm Centro without hesitation. The ecosystem of developers and applications (freeware, shareware and commercial) is enormous. Say what you will about the operating system being old (not to mention the sad, backwards ways of Palm, the company), but my Centro is running brand new programs alongside 8 year old applications without a problem. Oh, and the Centro has real…

I just looked up prices for the Centro, no can do. That puts it in shooting distance of every single windows mobile phone I'd been considering and the iPhone as well. And the Nokia N95 if you tack on $100.

Re: Smartphone Decision for Young Programmer?

#23

Post by rcoder »

I have a BlackBerry Curve on T-Mobile, and generally think it's the best mobile email client I've ever used. There are a decent number of downloadable apps, and OTA J2ME provisioning is actually pretty awesome. In terms of "hackability", it's tough to find anything better than a full-featured, reasonably-fast Java stack, since you can do development and deployment from your choice of platforms and hosting providers.

However, the Curve firmware (at least at OS version 4.3) has two major flaws. First, it's intermittently crash-prone and slow when using 3rd-party applications. Second, it locks up after a few minutes and has to be hard-rebooted when I try to use it as a Bluetooth modem for my Mac, which is especially annoying since a full restart takes more than five minutes.

Regardless, I still think I made the right choice in selecting the Curve over an iPhone, for one simple reason: UMA. Being able to pay $20/mo. for unlimited calling over any WiFi network has already paid for itself many times over when I've been outside the US (or even in rural parts of the US) and avoided having to pay roaming fees.

Re: Smartphone Decision for Young Programmer?

#24

Post by alnayyir »

paulgb wrote: post #12
alnayyir wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Android effectively doesn't exist yet and is as good as vaporware to me until I see some phones on sale. Hm. So far I'm leaning towards a jailbroken iphone, but! What particular blackberry model would you recommend?

The blackberry bold is coming out soon, maybe you should hold off until then. Symbian is being open-sourced, and Nokia is known for being developer friendly as far as I know. iPhones are cool, but don't seem to be particularly developer friendly. Also, FYI, I think you need a mac to develop for them.

Yes you do need a mac. The only mac in my room out of the many, many computers I own is a PowerMac G4 I got with 768mb of ram (500 mhz proccy! :( ) for $30 a month or so ago.

Got a fresh install of Tiger on it, then stopped using it. I like OS X, but the lag kills me compared to my primary server/desktop machine with quad xeons and 4 gb of ram :\

Sigh. I'm not paying what apple or second-hand sellers want for a mac. Period. Unless I get a steal or Apple invents the second-coming of performance.

Re: Smartphone Decision for Young Programmer?

#25

Post by alnayyir »

orib wrote: post #15
alnayyir wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Android effectively doesn't exist yet and is as good as vaporware to me until I see some phones on sale. Hm. So far I'm leaning towards a jailbroken iphone, but! What particular blackberry model would you recommend?

I second waiting for the bold. It's quite capable, and has a screen with double the pixel density (screen has the same resolution, but is smaller to make room for the keyboard) of the IPhone. It's beautifully sharp, and I'd have to say that the tactile keyboard leaves any touchscreen in the dust when it comes to actually doing input to the device. Disclaimer: I'm a co-op student at RIM for the summer. This means that…

I looked at the bold, and as long as I can subvert the tethering fees that T-Mobile has, I'll be okay. It seems to have all the features I want, and the processor looks beastly. This is important (TM) to me, because laggy interfaces make me want to fling devices across rooms. namely, my room.

What was your experience, in detail, you'd say, with the bold?

Re: Smartphone Decision for Young Programmer?

#27

Post by capoeirista »

alnayyir wrote: post #20
christefano wrote: post #19

It doesn't meet your criteria, but I recommend the Palm Centro without hesitation. The ecosystem of developers and applications (freeware, shareware and commercial) is enormous. Say what you will about the operating system being old (not to mention the sad, backwards ways of Palm, the company), but my Centro is running brand new programs alongside 8 year old applications without a problem. Oh, and the Centro has real…

I'll definitely look into it, I did consider a Palm in general in lieu of that Treo I mentioned. If it's price competitive and it has some of the features I'm looking for, I'll strongly consider it. Thanks for the heads up. Personally not concerned with the radiation levels though. Power output of a cellphone is a couple orders of magnitude below anything I see causing cancer or non-trival DNA damage.

What constitutes trivial DNA damage?

Re: Smartphone Decision for Young Programmer?

#28

Post by sharjeel »

I've been using HTC P3300 (http://www.gsmarena.com/htc_p3300-1693.php) and I've found it almost a replacement for my laptop to use it on the go. I use it to check my mails, browsing (OperaMini rox), connect to my servers using Putty, car navigation using Pocket Google Maps, WarDriving, storage device and a lot of other stuff including using it as speedometer :)

I am thinking about upgarding to HTC TyTn II or HTC Touch Pro. Both are great phones. Infact Windows Mobile is a cool platform with so many useful applications. Windows Mobile doesn't is great out of the box but with little tweaking no other phones can beat it.

I recommend that you go for any Windows Mobile 6.1 based device. However HTC TyTn II and Touch Pro are highly recommended :)

Re: Smartphone Decision for Young Programmer?

#30

Post by davidw »

martythemaniak wrote: post #2

As I've posted elsewhere, I think the Blackberry if vastly underestimated by people around these parts, which I don't really understand. The OS is rock solid, they have very durable hardware construction, a huge number of features compared to the iPhone and a $20 API key will get you access to APIs which iPhone users only dream about (regular APIs require no key). I don't know what you mean by hackability. The iPhone…

> I don't know what you mean by hackability. The iPhone is good because with the amount of attention it has received, you can get a huge number of cracked applications, something you won't find on the BB. If you were planning on actually buying apps, this won't be a problem.

That is not what we mean by hacking around here, or it shouldn't be.

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