Okay, I’m thinking about buying a decent smartphone but, before I waffle on about that, let me get something straight. All I have ever used is a simple mobile phone for making phone calls. The only reason I bothered with one was because in Crete we don’t have a phone line since with the few calls we make it’s hardly worth paying the line rental. It was also the case that doing so was pointless for Internet because, apparently, there was no broadband up in the mountains where we were. (It is possible that there is but OTE didn’t want you to know that, preferring to sell you a year’s dial-up Internet then sell you broadband on top of that. The phone company there is as corrupt as the rest of everything in Greece.)
So, smartphones and what do I want? I’m trying to clarify my thoughts on this and, frankly, I don’t know what these phones are capable of.
I want to be able to get onto the Internet in Internet bars and cafes. I want to be able to twitter and send and receive emails when away from such access and in such circumstances I don’t want to be paying set costs for tweets and emails or be spending a lot of time connected to the Internet through the mobile network. I want to send all this stuff as text messages (which apparently discounts Virgin and T-Mobile as they are not carriers on Twitter).
I don’t want to have to type these tweets, blogs and emails through the keypad or touchscreen of the phone. I would like to be able to plug it into my laptop where I have typed them, load these to the phone to later send either through the mobile network or Internet connection. In effect I want to use the much more easy-to-use keyboard on my laptop and I don’t want that phone on for long. I don’t want to be tied into a contract; I would rather have pay-as-you-go. This is mainly because I will mainly be using this phone in Crete – I don’t want to be paying monthly for the five months here when I simply won’t use the phone.
What do you think? (And keep it simple)