Off to Feature Phone Land
I'm sort of thinking I need to swap phones for a while again to see what it's like outside of the smart phone nirvana I live in. I'm sure I'll regret it quickly, but I really need to hang out for a while in Feature Phone Land and grok what the mobile proletariat is using.
I've got a ton of phones, so moving to something else could be as simple as swapping a SIM card and figuring out the best way to move my contacts. That's if I want to keep my current Cingular phone number. I also have a T-Mobile Sidekick and a Verizon EVDO Samsung phone as well. I've got an urge to spend time with both, but that would require me telling everyone my new phone number, etc. I could do a forwarding thing, I guess, but I wouldn't get my SMS messages... Hmmm. There needs to be a virtual SMS number you can give people that routes to wherever you are, no? (I think I thought of this already and decided it was called Push Email...).
I know the Hiptop isn't exactly a normal flip phone, but ever since this month's MoMo where Danger presented, I've been toying with the idea of using my Sidekick more and having a keyboard and 24/7 IM and email access... but again, the phone number problem would pop up as well as the fact it's not EDGE (only GPRS). And of course it's the size of a small tank.
I'll probably use the Motorola V3 RAZR for a while so I can just swap the SIM - it's a hip phone, but has the same UI and "OS" as the other more mainstream phones like the V500 so it'll be a good test (though again it's not EDGE - which could kill me). But the idea is to see what sort of data services I would be comfortable using on this sort of phone. I use Yahoo! Mobile Search all the time on my 6680 - would I swap to the SMS version on the RAZR? How much will I miss the high resolution camera and the ability to take video? What about games and general utilities?
This is really the core of the idea - to step back from using phones that are 18 months ahead of the mass market and see what everyone else is using right now.
Wish me luck. :-)
-Russ