Blog

So Jen and I finally got new cell phones. Jen's old phone got a crack in the display and she started using an old borrowed one from a friend and then mine went through the wash, destroying it, and I had to start using Jen's old pink cracked phone. We looked at messaging phones and smart phones from AT&T, our courier at the time, but unfortunately if you did not go for the iPhone you were pretty much stuck with an overpriced Blackberry or Windows Mobile phone. I really like the iPhone, but Jen wanted a keyboard and I didn't want to have to install iTunes (glorified spreadsheet music manager memory hog) or pay the extra monthly fees just for the iPhone or Blackberry. There was a lot of hype around the Droid phone, but it is only available at Verizon and we will NEVER switch back too them. So that pretty much left T-mobile and Sprint in our area. Both of them have Android based smart phones, so after comparing the plans we went with Sprint and the Samsung Moment slider Android phone. I was able to get a nice discount on the phones and plan through my work. For only $30 more then what I was paying for AT&T's 550 shared minutes with no data or messaging, we were able to get 1500 minutes, unlimited data and messaging, unlimited mobile-to-mobile with any carrier, and the nights start at 7PM rather then 9PM. Nobody else came even close.

The Samsung Moment is surprising really nice and pretty quick. It is running an old version of Android and I have been told that Sprint is really slow at upgrading, but it still works pretty well. The active-matrix OLED screen is beautiful. I have just started playing with the apps, and one of the neatest ones is Google Latitude. It uses Google maps and the built in GPS to show you where your friends are on a live map. You can hide yourself and pick who sees you, so it is not as creepy as it sounds. Another app I downloaded is Google Listen which lets you manage podcasts you listen to. With it, you subscribe to audio podcasts and it will download/cache them and make available even if you are off the network. The usuals like Pandora, Twitter apps, and Facebook are all available, but I have found that many of the mobile web versions of the sites work really well if not better. Facebook is one of those. I also downloaded a few barcode reading apps that let you scan in UPC barcodes and it looks up prices and reviews. I have not had a chance to try it out yet but it would seem to be useful. I have been using Google Voice and there is an app for it that integrates with the contacts so that when placing a call, the phone can use my Google Voice number rather then my cell number, pretty sweet. It also lets me read my Google voice mail and of course listen. We ordered screen and case protectors and 8GB memory cards (did not know 2GB cards were included!) that have not come in yet. Unfortunately the phone was just released a week before we ordered so the accessories were a bit lacking. Battery life is ok, I barely made it the whole workday, but I was playing with it a lot. 10:38 PM | Comments [0]