So Caitlin and I both want to get smart phones at some point. Mainly I want to be able to check email on my phone. Not only is it important for work (the biggest reason) but I’m sick of my old really bad phone.
I googled a lot today about the different cell phone’s and phone OS’s out there and it really seems limited. Here is what I’ve gathered so far:
- Windows Mobile / Symbian: I’m grouping these together cause I’m getting the same feel from both. It seems the OS’s are pretty limited in features and while both have apps, a ton are not free and neither is anywhere close to the number of apps that the iPhone has (for normal and jailbroken phones). Reviews of phones that use these OS’s seem to constantly talk about limits.
- Palm: coming out with a new OS soon but it doesn’t seem to be here. Doesn’t have the cool geeky features I want. Kind of looped into the above group.
- Blackberry: What I would probably get if I didn’t get an iPhone. Seems really strong at what it does, just doesn’t do everything I want. Also suffers from the lack of app community problem that all of the above phones do.
- OpenMoku: I really want an OpenMoku phone, but since the announcement the iPhone has droped in price by a lot and delivered while this phone hasn’t done basically anything. They made a public release which had really poor software. I wish this would get more corporate backing cause at the moment the OS is lagging behind. Most of the reviews I’ve ready haven’t been positive. This would be my favorite in the list if the OS was more fully featured out of the box.
- Google Android: This actually has everything I want. Linux based, a good API, corporate backing. The problem? WHERE ARE THE PHONES! One phone from T-Mobile doesn’t cut it. Seriously let’s get more android phones on the market before Apple does something more that makes the current Android features seem out-dated.
- iPhone</strong>: When I talk about the iPhone I only am talking about a phone that has been jailbroken. I want to ssh into my phone. I want to tether my laptop through it. I want to run NES emulator’s on it. I want to look up LDAP addresses and use it as a GPS. I want to check email, I want to listen to music, I want to get cool instrument apps on it. A jailbroken iPhone can do all of that. I’m sick of Apple’s DRM and limitations but jailbreaking solves most of them. I am giving money to evil but at the same time there aren’t other options that satisfy what I need to do with the phone. I REALLY want an open source phone but none give you a BSD base with OpenSSH installed yet.
Oh well… eventually maybe the phone circuit will be better, but for now with me being on AT&T currently anyway, it really looks like a jailbroken iPhone is the way to go.