Silly gadget fun
Tuesday January 24, 2006; part of: Nerdery

The latest gadget is a little Nokia phone, which I bought because I was exasperated with the Motorola clamshell losing the power of speech: often the only way to hear the person on the other end was to turn on the speakerphone. With gadgets, I have accelerated relationships. I run from hope and happiness, through disillusion and exasperation to the long trudge of resignation in about a week.

Disillusion: the Motorola did two clever ringing things that the Nokia won’t: it had a setting to vibrate before ringing, and it allowed me to associate individual ring tones with particular people. It also worked much more closely with the palm pilot. The Nokia won’t dial numbers or send texts from the Palm.

None of this really matters. The new phone pretty much entirely replaces the Palm for everything except ebooks. The calendar works. The predictive text is good enough to allow me to send legible messages fairly quickly. The phone books holds 1000 contacts, which is enough. I have managed to get the email working so that I can read and send emails from the phone directly. There is even a tiny version of opera which is absurd but wonderful too. Maybe the rest of the world has been there forever, but I am really impressed.

Posted by andrewb at January 24, 2006 05:17 PM
Comments

It is a nice little phone - I've had mine for about a month now, and am still happy with it. You can assign ringtones to individuals, but it is a bit of a kludge. You need to set up a group especially for that person, and then assign a ringtone to the group. A bit fiddly, but doable unless you really want every different contact to have their own ringtone.

Posted by: Jakob Whitfield on January 25, 2006 12:18 PM

Ah. Thanks. All I really want is a ringtone for family members. The opening bars of New Speedway Boogie will do.

Posted by: acb on January 26, 2006 07:59 AM

You can make it vibrate before ringing by setting up a ringtone with a few bars of silence before playing. Easy to do - the ringtones are standard midi files, so just create one, leaving 5 or 6 seconds' silence at the beginning, and then upload it using bluetooth or a data cable. Kludgey, I know, but it's still a better phone than any gimickey Motorola. Why do people buy phones other than Nokias, anyway? They are the only ones that work...

I enjoy your blog, even though I never comment.

Please expand on your cryptic comments about Dawkins's documentary on religion though! No need to betray any confidences, but tell us what you think, and maybe summarise the eminent scientists' views.... I'm sure I'm not the only one who's intrigued...

Posted by: Thomas on January 28, 2006 03:06 PM

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