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I was going to recommend something like this basically.

If you drop the DVD-R requirement, any PDA or smartphone should do the trick, really. I recently got an HTC S730. The slide-out keyboard is actually pretty good for emails and notes, but I could imagine it'd get old pretty fast if your writing style approaches Neal Stephenson's levels of verbosity. As the parent suggests, this could solved with a bluetooth keyboard, although I'm yet to try that. Unlike the Nokia tablet however, this thing not only is a functional GSM phone, but also looks like one too. This means less attention to yourself since phones are much more common in 3rd world countries than shiny gadgets with huge touchscreens.

Still, if I were doing something like that, I'd probably also consider something more powerful. Like maybe a TyTN II, or better yet, something with a VGA screen. It's quite a bit more expensive than an S730, but also much more capable due to the tilting* touchscreen. I still have my old Asus A600 PDA, and there are things at which it's still much better than the S730. You could write your rants in a full office environment with something like SoftMaker Office, resize and edit the photos from your camera in PocketArtist before uploading them, etc.

I hope this doesn't sound like an ad, I've actually happily used all this stuff (except for the TyTN), and while I'm not sure if this would be my final choice for a trip like that, I'd certainly think about this solution.

PS. Looking at the HTC product listing, they also have some sort of weird laptop/tablet/PDA hybrid thingie called Shift which seems pretty small and light (7", 800g).

*The tilt feature could be useful if you put the device on the table while typing on the BT keyboard.

I was going to recommend something like this basically.

If you drop the DVD-R requirement, any PDA or smartphone should do the trick, really. I recently got an HTC S730. The slide-out keyboard is actually pretty good for emails and notes, but I could imagine it'd get old pretty fast if your writing style approaches Neal Stephenson's levels of verbosity. As the parent suggests, this could solved with a bluetooth keyboard, although I'm yet to try that. Unlike the Nokia tablet however, this thing not only is a functional GSM phone, but also looks like one too. This means less attention to yourself since phones are much more common in 3rd world countries than shiny gadgets with huge touchscreens.

Still, if I were doing something like that, I'd probably also consider something more powerful. Like maybe a TyTN II, or better yet, something with a VGA screen. It's quite a bit more expensive than an S730, but also much more capable due to the tilting* touchscreen. I still have my old Asus A600 PDA, and there are things at which it's still much better than the S730. You could write your rants in a full office environment with something like SoftMaker Office, resize and edit the photos from your camera in PocketArtist before uploading them, etc.

I hope this doesn't sound like an ad, I've actually happily used all this stuff (except for the TyTN), and while I'm not sure if this would be my final choice for a trip like that, I'd certainly think about this solution.

PS. Looking at the HTC product listing, they also have some sort of weird laptop/tablet/PDA hybrid thingie called Shift which seems pretty small and light (7", 800g).

*The tilt feature could be useful if you put the device on the table while typing on the BT keyboard.

one tiny little bit.

THE COMPETITION

When the article talks about all the things they needed to work out how the phone connects to networks and how the brain gets microwaved (or not) it fails to mention, that this is only news to Apple, not all the other mobile phone manufacturers of the world. Especially when the article talks about the phone being light years ahead it completely resolves into pure Apple fanboy talk.

Those are just three examples of phones that you could compare to the Iphone:
http://www.lge.com/products/model/detail/ke850.jhtml
http://www.htc.com/product/03-product_htctouch.htm
http://uk.samsungmobile.com/mobile/SGH-F700

I have one just like the last Samsung model. Mine also has WLan and, like the Samsung, it has a full sized keyboard. Nokia is not even on that list. All of the phone makers have a wide variaty of phones to fit every customers preferred style. Candy bar being the best liked. Many have important features that the Iphone is lacking. Like UMTS support to get decent speed for surfing whe web. Opera build a decent web browser complete with a proxy that "refits" webpages so they look good on a small screen years ago. It is written in Java and works on many phones.

The mobile phone market has enough players that the competition actually works (not like the OS market for PCs). Of those three phones up the all of them use a different OS for example. The HTC model even uses Microsoft Mobile, an OS that sucks less and less with each version, because they face a steep competition by Symbian. And Google just joined.

There are just two things that were new with the IPhone. First was the touchscreen that you can operate on with more than one finger. A feature that is pretty cool and was therefore swiftly copied by everyone else.

The second thing is the Apple marketing. The only thing right now that makes Apple stand out. That and their tie in with Itunes. Itunes has such a large market share, it almost became a monopoly. And now they try to extend that power to other products and markets. Sounds familiar? Another reason why the IPod-ITunes connection works so good.

And that brings us to the last little thing which the article good completely right. Back in 2002 (I would say even earlier, but the article says that was when Jobs woke up to that fact) it became clear that phones will aquire more and more memory and computing power, just like the regular PC. Some people prefer to have funtions seperate on different devices. They like their music player, phone and PDA, or just one of them. Other people like to have everything in one device. And Jobs/Apple wanted to sell Ipods to those people as well. So the Ipod needed to become a phone and a PDA.

And it did. Ipod touch is a PDA and the Iphone is a smartphone.

iPhone having a touch screen GUI isn't a valid reason for it not having J2ME support. Just in example look at some other phones that don't have the normal form factor that traditional phones and that have support for J2ME.

• Nokia E90 Communicator

• Nokia E61i

• Sony-Ericsson P1i

• LG KU990

• HTC Touch

As you can see all those phones support J2ME. The real reason why iPhone doesn't have J2ME support is the same reason why it didn't have MMS support: Apple just couldn't deliver.

I also don't think that there is any reason to change from J2ME to any other framework ff you can do the application in J2ME. If you can't do the application in J2ME, the next choice is S60. J2ME support is built in virtually every phone meaning and S60 is also very popular. Why limit yourself to a device and framework that has only a million users when you can go to tens and hundreds of millions of users?

No actually I meant the HTC touch, which is already out: http://www.htc.com/

Not an exact clone, but it has everything and more.

TrollTech is not comparable to alliances like HTC + Google. Have you seen HTC TyTN II? The only weak point I see is building a good mobile GUI in Linux.

Huh, sounds like the Kaiser, except the Kaiser is already out.

There are some pretty nifty keyboard phones available at the moment. The HTC S710 for example (Opera supposedly works on it). That's what I'm getting. iPhone is too much bling, too little... phone.

Oh yeah, and after getting burned by the 3G iPod battery, I'm not getting anything Apple again unless it comes with user replacable battery.

If the point of this article was to compare smartphones that offer similar functionality to the iPhone, the more obvious HTC product would have been the "Touch". It's got a fantastic interface, Windows Mobile 6 Professional, a user replaceable battery, multimedia features and light weight. And you're not stuck with ATT/Cingular as a service provider.

http://www.htc.com/product/03-product_htctouch.htm

Best,

actually, my htc tytn does everything the iphone does, and a lot more like 3g, hsdpa, bluetooth modem, running ssh clients, no freaking itunes needed to sync the thing, ...

btw most windows mobile based ppc phones today have all theese features

Opera ?
Depends if you've got a smartphone or a pocket pc I guess.
The iPhone is not a phone, it's a PDA as far as I can tell, with a mac skin to it.
I already have a decent PDA/phone in the HTC P3600, which has GPS and TomTom and covers all the major 3G networks. I have added Google maps, WiFiFoFum for war driving (did I mention it has WiFi ?). I also have free apps for SSH access and better media playback.
Ok it cost more than the projected cost of the iPhone, but we haven't seen the real capability of the iPhone yet have we ?

From the comments you have made so far, you have not made yourself appear knowledgeable on the subject matter. The HTC Touch is a tri-band phone, operating at 900MHz, 1800MHz and 1900MHz. 1800MHz is common to Europe and the USA, and so this phone will certainly "bridge the US and EU networks".

Further more... the operating system a phone runs has very little to do with what bands of frequencies its radio operates at. By inferring it does, you are certainly not helping your case in showing even the slightest amount of aptitude for the subject at hand. Suggesting that because it is a Microsoft-powered smart phone that it could not operate in the USA and Europe is trollish at best.

I would suggest that before you wonder something out loud about this again you should at least perform even a minor amount of research.

By the looks of this, their phone isn't the only attempt at a rip-off, the commercial is nearly identical to Apple's "brand vision". It's so similar it's nearly embarrassing to watch. I wonder if these airing would actually help Apple..

http://www.htc.com/

I was really hoping to see some objective insights into HTC's PDA phones here... I've been toying with the idea of getting one.

I especially like the Atermis [ http://www.europe.htc.com/products/htcp3300.html ] and the Trinity [ http://www.europe.htc.com/products/htcp3600.html ] - though I'd love to read a comparison with other connected PDA/Phones on the market.

I was really hoping to see some objective insights into HTC's PDA phones here... I've been toying with the idea of getting one.

I especially like the Atermis [ http://www.europe.htc.com/products/htcp3300.html ] and the Trinity [ http://www.europe.htc.com/products/htcp3600.html ] - though I'd love to read a comparison with other connected PDA/Phones on the market.

HTC's phones are much better.

But they are relatively unknown outside of XDA-dev and Pocket PC circles.

My Blue Angel came out over two years ago, but I can do more with it than with an iPhone:

• Watch movies, play MP3s (all media formats supported with TCPMP)
• Connect and transfer using: Bluetooth, WiFi, IR, GPRS, USB
• Install and play games
• Browse the internet with any number of browsers (e.g. PIE, NetFront, Opera, ...)
• GPS navigation w/ speech (BT GPS receiver required)
• Read and edit Word, PowerPoint, Excel docs
• Print documents to IR-enabled printers
• Use SSH and VPN to securely connect to home or work

HTC phones are the best in the world for tech users. The only reason iPhone gets the hype is because of Apple's brand.

It's the same reason iPod sold so well, even though iRiver's H140 / iHP-40 is superior in many ways.

HTC's phones are much better.

But they are relatively unknown outside of XDA-dev and Pocket PC circles.

My Blue Angel came out over two years ago, but I can do more with it than with an iPhone:

• Watch movies, play MP3s (all media formats supported with TCPMP)
• Connect and transfer using: Bluetooth, WiFi, IR, GPRS, USB
• Install and play games
• Browse the internet with any number of browsers (e.g. PIE, NetFront, Opera, ...)
• GPS navigation w/ speech (BT GPS receiver required)
• Read and edit Word, PowerPoint, Excel docs
• Print documents to IR-enabled printers
• Use SSH and VPN to securely connect to home or work

HTC phones are the best in the world for tech users. The only reason iPhone gets the hype is because of Apple's brand.

It's the same reason iPod sold so well, even though iRiver's H140 / iHP-40 is superior in many ways.

http://www.europe.htc.com/products/htctytn.html I've got one of those, works well. I think you can get adapters to plug into a VGA monitor but I'm not bothered about that. The build quality probably isn't up to taking a lot of beating if the keyboard was out at the time, but overall it works well as a phone and integrates fully with the Exchange server at work, which I just upgraded to 2003 recently pretty much to get DirectPush going. We now have 3 WM5 devices and will probably get more as more of the managers see how good they are :)

Micro$oft in their infinite wisdom started requiring tru$ted applications starting with WM2005.

No it's probably a HTC-universal (Qtek 9000 etc) or another phone from HTC http://www.europe.htc.com/products/. Agreed, they run windows mobile, but they have a lot more features (UMTS/HSDPA - EVDO - WiFi- Bluetooth - SD card - higher resolution) than this phone for a lower price. I mean, memory for 30 messages and 300 contacts? That's ridiculous in this day and age