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You write as if the Nokia Communicator was discontinued or something. Not so -- they've kept developing new models, it still sells fairly well, and I'm sure any well-stocked mobile dealer would have some for sale. Based on what I've personally seen, I'd say that the Nokia Communicator is the most popular PDA in Finland. And to keep this on-topic, there is a C64 emulator for the Nokia Communicator.

I have a Nokia 6510 that came with a CD containing the Nokia PC Suite. The Nokia PC Suite has an application called Nokia PC Sync that allows synchronisation between the phone and a wide variety of PIM including MS Outlook and Lotus Notes. The synchronisation can be done over infra-red or a COM port.

Each Nokia phone has its own verson of PC suite.

PC Suite for 6510

I have a Nokia 6510 that came with a CD containing the Nokia PC Suite. The Nokia PC Suite has an application called Nokia PC Sync that allows synchronisation between the phone and a wide variety of PIM including MS Outlook and Lotus Notes. The synchronisation can be done over infra-red or a COM port.

Each Nokia phone has its own verson of PC suite.

PC Suite for 6510

Specifically, J2ME (micro edition) software is supposed to run on a wide variety of devices, some of which may actually exist.

Nokia has plenty of information on getting started in their developer's Forum.

In nokia's products page, you can see a "coming soon" that is B/W. Just besides two other fairly recent B/W models.

I agree anyway that some features just will not be an option, 2 years from now. In the same B/W case: it suddently becomes cheaper to make them color if you produce more color screens than B/W. Which anyway is what happened to TVs.
Or the SMS case. It's just not worth it to make a spetial chip and OS just not to include it.

In nokia's products page, you can see a "coming soon" that is B/W. Just besides two other fairly recent B/W models.

I agree anyway that some features just will not be an option, 2 years from now. In the same B/W case: it suddently becomes cheaper to make them color if you produce more color screens than B/W. Which anyway is what happened to TVs.
Or the SMS case. It's just not worth it to make a spetial chip and OS just not to include it.

In nokia's products page, you can see a "coming soon" that is B/W. Just besides two other fairly recent B/W models.

I agree anyway that some features just will not be an option, 2 years from now. In the same B/W case: it suddently becomes cheaper to make them color if you produce more color screens than B/W. Which anyway is what happened to TVs.
Or the SMS case. It's just not worth it to make a spetial chip and OS just not to include it.

I've been using GSM phones since 900MHz-only years around the world, and when I finally got a GSM phone for using it in the States as well, I didn't realize that I needed to be careful about reception issues. Apparently, 1900MHz (the main -and until recently only- frequency for GSM phones in North America) is not as good as 900MHz for rural areas. That means that, while it's probably great in big cities, it's no good elsewhere around the States.

Moral of the story: I got burned badly with an Ericsson T68i, which I had replaced 4 times before finally giving up on it ever working well as a phone. Sure, it was one of the first phones with color, bluetooth, PDA-like capabilities, it could even iSync with my PBG4 and my Palm, but I expect a phone first of all to work fine - as a phone! Is that so unusual?

So I looked and looked, and finally found a good independent source of information about phone's reception qualities (since no phone company nor cellphone provider will tell you anything about which phone works better in terms of reception: I've tried asking a lot of them).

I ended up with a Motorola P280. It does what I need, in order of importance:

1. great reception on all 3 main bands (1900,1800,900MHz)
2. SMS with enough characters on the screen at once
3. it can sync phone numbers (even calendar entries?) with iSync (despite the fact that no documentation admits it, its icon appears happily on iSync's panel when connecting it with a USB cable).
4. if necessary, it can be used as a GPRS modem (again, through USB)

Apparently, Nokia's 3650 is a good phone despite the built-in gadgets. But the keypad... that's what I would not want to have when typing SMSs...

Well, the 3100 you link to is actually a pretty advanced (and expensive) model. It has colour screen and everything. Nokia 1100 is about as basic as you can get.

I beg to differ with you begging to differ.

Maybe in the US, but here in the UK it is almost impossible to buy a plain black and white basic phone.

Phone functionality works in 6 month cycles. What is high tier this year will be middle tier middle of next year and low tier at the end of the year.

6 months ago colour screens and polyphonic was middle tier, now even the most basic phone these days has them both. Next year the most basic phone will have a camera (and the high tier will also have cameras but be capable of pushing 2 megapixels)

Ever tried getting a phone that doesn't have SMS? You can't and in two years it'll be the same with the other bits of functionality you despise.

So yes, they are dominating. Just because you are holding back doesn't mean they aren't. But when yours bites the dust you'll realise that you'll have to move with the times.

Which may or may not be a good thing depending on your point of view.

Splash resistant Nokia 5100 has a flashlight, FM radio and thermometer.

A flashlight would be cool, though.

Get Nokia 5100 (or it's US equivalent version). It has actually built in LED flashlight (2 white-bluish) high power LEDs. Comes in very handy sometimes. Though it looks more like a toy than a serious phone (anyway when I show the flashlight it makes a big impression (not on the chicks, alas)).

a lot of the people also want those features, or would be willing to buy the product at the price where those features can be added(so the alternative is to pay for nothing or pay for those features anyways.). If people really were sheep you'd still be paying 1000+$ for a mobile phone that barely did anything.

there are models like nokia 1100 that practically don't do anything else than make phone calls, however practically nobody wants to replace his/her existing phone with it(unless there's something seriously wrong with the old one and the individual wants a stripped down phone 'just because', hell, you can usually pick up a better phone for about the same money anyways).

also the added in capabilities don't really transfer straight to prices(the prices which you pay for the things when there's a law mandating that the phones can't be locked to certain operator) as electronics come cheaper and cheaper. and people ARE willing to pay ~200-300euros for a phone(there's several phones that have nearly identical feature-set apart from how they look, yet have almost 100e price difference). there's not much market for el cheapo phones around here anymore either as everyone has a gsm phone already(there's market for cheapish phones though that's just cheapish phones with _new_ bling bling features but not for outright cheap as in stripped).

me? I practically had a 3110(that pretty much only makes phone calls and has crappy sms) in use till last summer(the 3110 was introduced when? 1998? 1997?) when I upgraded to a 3650, fell in love with it's features(irc, reading and posting to slashdot and ebooks while spending some time at grandparents doing some forestwork last summer). later I upgraded to n-gage(yes, upgraded. it is an upgrade if you look it like a geek because n-gage has more memory so using opera is possible when doing other things at the same time with it, also I like the pad more). What I'm waiting for is when the teen age group moves massively into using IM(irc, icq & etc) from their phones instead of using sms(which still is usually priced ridiculously high when you compare to the cost of just transferring data), people are already starting to see that the sms 'services' are ridiculously priced and everything they offer is pretty much offered on the internet just for the cost of data transfer.

what do normal young people aged like me(22) usually want with their phone nowadays around here? usability and bling bling(yes they do want that, sorry.). the camera carried in phone is for entirely different occasions than the ones you have the digicam for, though apart from 7650/3650/6600 they're pretty useless for even those occasions(and on 7650 the memory is too small too as it doesn't have mmc card support).

p800/900 might be intresting too but has just those few things that suck about it and it's expensive.

would you be willing to buy a computer that only ran microsoft office and nothing else? when the computer that ran all the normal stuff and had a free sdk(and lots of 3rd party apps) would only cost just few bucks more? I think we've been down that road(and no, computers aren't that much different in that aspect from mobile phones).

I remember a line from slashdot from few weeks back, said by someone in the 70's: "I don't know what the computer of the future looks like but I know what it will be called: a phone".

well, at least I like having 256mb of storage in my 'phone' and the sdk as well.. fuck if I really wanted to carry something around just for phoning I'd still use the 3110 as the primary phone, now I have something I can run a port of putty in if I need to(+I got enough mp3's for my listening purposes without needing to carry another device around to everywhere).

and if you just complain about lack of choice: tell your legislators that provider-lock in phones sucks. You're paying premium for that phone anyways when buying in a tie in deal(and really slows down the adaption anyways, lock in is illeagal here because it distorts costumers ability to evaluate the real prices you end up paying for the phone and service).

Nokia 5100

Cheap, simple, and it has a flashlight. Feature list: makes calls, does short messaging, and has a flashlight.

There you go.

I'd also add that the news page talks a lot about how helix is being used by our partners. Worth a read! https://www.helixcommunity.org/

To name the top few, in order of appearance:

• RealPlayer on the Nokia 6620
• Time Warner Cable using helix to support the Road Runner high-speed data service
• Integration with IBM WebSphere

I'm not sure about the GPS side of things, but the most hacker-friendly phones I've found are the Nokias from AT&T wireless. They don't place any restrictions on the phones, and the development kits as well as software to transfer the applications are freely available for download from Nokia's website. Mine is a J2ME environment and has been fun to play with so far. AFAICT, they are the only ones in the US who have not restricted their phones.

Lots of good developer info is available on forum.nokia.com, and some basic win32 tools are available here.

Hint for buying one: Shop Amazon for the best price, then go to the AT&T wireless store near you to purchase. Show them Amazon's price, and they will often get close or even match it without requiring you to mail something in for a rebate.

I don't know whether it's around in the US, but my Nokia 6600 manages all that and more. You can install/uninstall applications, write them with the free SDK from Nokia and test them on their emulator.

It's got a full-blown Symbian multi-tasking OS, and you might even be able to do what you want with MiniGPS. It cost me the equivalent of about $180, with contract.

The important thing for me is that MAME runs on it. :-)

I have tried to confirm this posting at the news section of NOKIA. As far as I could see there is no official news about Perl on NOKIAs phones. Perhaps we have to wait for the recently announced mobile Linux cell phones.

Sure, here's an entire PDF of them

Known issues with 6600

If you KNOW you have issues - DON'T SHIP THE PRODUCT! Its painfully clear that we can't upgrade these phones once they're in the space.

Big question - does it have an SSH client?

What? For the Nokia Series 60 platform? Yes!

I SSH into my workplace UNIX box from my Nokia 3650 moderately regularly. The SSH client for SymbainOS is a port of PuTTY and can be found here.

What's the REAL story here?

I could never get my laptop(dell latitude lt, P1 233 mmx, 64mb ram, 4Gb HD) to boot to knoppix. [...] i need support for a pcmcia cd-rom drive and my wireless card as well as my watch

your watch should be supported without problems, as an usb-scsi storage device. that's how my HP320 digital camera(128 MB) and nokia 5510(64 MB) work.

when you check this out, plesase tell us whether MandrakeMove works better than Knoppix

This is the same reason why your mobile phone has so many features, while you're lucky if your landline phone has caller id.

I thought that Nokia was mostly responsible and Japan missed the start of the revolution. Finland had commercial digital GSM service in 1992. Japan's iMode "3G" service launched in 1999, seven years later.

Oh.. and my phone company wants to charge me more for caller ID - BECAUSE THEY CAN. Mobile companies include it for free because the competition does.

I think the 3650 is great (disclaimer: i have one). The keypad really isn't as bad as people make it out to be, and it has the best feature-set of any phone on the market.

And if you don't like the keypad, the 3660 will be here soon.

I recently got to play with a S-E T616, and while it's a very sexy little phone, it's feature-set leaves much to be desired. It's camera's max resolution is 288x253, and it only has a couple mb of memory built-in (non-upgradable). Running J2ME applets is painfully slow.

The 3650 has 4mb built-in, and can be upgraded with a MMC card. Mine came with a 16mb card, and you can get up to 128mb. Camera is 640x480 (still not great, but better than the T616), and it's very responsive when using 3rd party apps, of which there are plenty.

Veering back on-topic... I've used both phones with a Belkin USB BT dongle with no problem whatsoever, and they were able to send stuff from one phone to the other fine as well. I don't have a BT headset (yet), so I don't know how well they perform with one.

The new Nokia 6600 could be a good choice, too...

And here's another link: Product page

The new Nokia 6600 could be a good choice, too...

And here's another link: Product page

Amazon reviews that said the display fades in sunlight

This is actually a common problem with most of the new colour display mobile phones. I own the Nokia 6610 (no bluetooth) and do experience this problem when the phone is used outdoors. I have yet to see a colour screen mobile phone that does not have problems being used in full sun.

One thing you need to look out for is there are some phones that are shipping with data-only bluetooth. So if you are planning to use a headset be careful of that. I was looking at the Nokia 7650 at one point but decided not to get it for that reason. The specs list contains bluetooth but I found out later it was data-only.

I use a T-Mobile with a Nokia 6310, a triband GSM phone that supports Bluetooth and GPRS. I have an older 15" TiBook that doesn't have built-in Bluetooth, so I picked up the D-Link USB Bluetooth Adapter.

OS X recognizes the D-Link device and the phone, and I use it quite regularly to do email, ssh, and /. as I travel around various cities. It's a little pokey, but it works well enough to recommend: I've used it to do emergency service on a Linux box from the back of a cab that was driving through Seattle, and it saved my bacon.

I believe you would have similar success with the Nokia 3650, which appears to retail for $50 with contract.

Annoyed by the rotary dial ?
Then get a 3660 !

But in all seriousness, this is good news since the 7650 (same series 60 symbian OS) is a really cool looking and small phone and would benefit from this as well.

But in all seriousness, this is good news since the 7650 (same series 60 symbian OS) is a really cool looking and small phone and would benefit from this as well.

I've got it on my Nokia 7650. installed and run without any problems. Tested at couple of games and everything looked fine, even the old decompressing flashy screens. It sometimes however slowed a bit down when doing music.

One of the best reasons for change to this is the layout of the page on small screens. Use of lists and divs and real titles and so on gives products like the Nokia Access Mobilizer (ex Eizel) a much better chance to guess what is going on and reformat the page intelligently.

I hate to say this, but you're not even close.

The N-Gage (note the spelling) runs J2ME MIDP 1.0 details from Foum Nokia

1) the heavier & bulkier it gets.

2) the more unstable it gets. There's nothing worse or more embarrassing than losing a call because your phone crashes. This happens even with relatively simple WAP phones, and all the time with the old VisorPhone I had.

1) the heavier & bulkier it gets.

2) the more unstable it gets. There's nothing worse or more embarrassing than losing a call because your phone crashes. This happens even with relatively simple WAP phones, and all the time with the old VisorPhone I had.

Nokia wants to sell phones, not software, hence it's in their best interest to provide free development tools. Thanks to this enlightened policy, there's a TON of software out there for Nokia phones.

Nokia wants to sell phones, not software, hence it's in their best interest to provide free development tools. Thanks to this enlightened policy, there's a TON of software out there for Nokia phones.

you know why those features appear there? most of them don't really 'cost' anything, they're just bits of software. and really, if people just settled a phone that 'just phones well' the sales of phones would be much much much lower, there's been such phones available for years(this year for example massive amounts of people switched to color screen phones, that as phones essentially work exactly like their old phones did). though many just buy a new phone instead of shelling out the cash for a new battery too. the phone can't do miracles about the providers network though.

how about a nice nokia 2100 if you don't want any features? or siemens a50?

the thing is that those phones(that don't have much features) do exist, but they're a horrible deal to actually buy(cost nearingly the same as the next phone in the range with couple of more useful functions), you essentially save a bit(not nearingly enough) of money to have things disabled.

How about one of these? Clean, elegant design, packed with very feature available. Completely in contrast to the hop-on POS, which looks like a cross between a fisher price toy and a brick.

Off course, I may not be in the markedsegment a pda/phone/portable console is aimed at, but as I'm in the markedsegment that will end up paying for it, I feel that I got a right to say a few words...

A phone is for comunicating. Anythign beyond that is a 'bonus' feature. To comunicate, you don't need much in the way of screen nor sound - and I'm more than happy to keep my old Nokia 5110 until it dies, as it gives me both voice and SMS coupled with a longlasting batterylife. In short, it is a good phone even if its a tad large to hold in one hand and cradle against my cheek.

On the other hand, both gaming and a PDA simply screams for large screens, and gaming in particular needs a decent soundsystem. My Palm130 has a screen thats about 5cm square, while my GBA has a screen thats about 6cm by 4cm. The ergometricks of the PDA and the GBA is also radicaly different (the PDA is held in the palm of one hand whiel the other manipulate the stylus, while the GBA is held with both hands, letting ones thumbs do the playing).

Then there is the power of the processors and the batterylife to consider. You may or may not be right that a 'modern' phone is more powerfull than a GBA, but I has a hard time beliving it can outrun a PDA. So you'll have to build the phone around the processor requirering the most powerfull CPU, in other words the PDA-prosessor (unless you make a design with mutiple CPU's). This in turn means that you'll eat up your battery faster than fast - my old phone lasts five to six days between recharging, while I must rechage my PDA about every day (I do use it a lot). If my phone was powered by a PDA-prosessor, I fear I would have to recharge it several times a day (the phone is on all the time when all is said and done).

The point of this rant? The 'intergrtaded device' is a pipedream. The requirements for the portable console, the PDA and the phone are mutualy incompatible - the ergonomics alone means that compromises must be made. Better to keep them seperate I say - that way one of them can break wihtout leaving you completly without mobile computingpower as well.

ps: I've also noticed that while the mobile phone is banned on all flights, and most cabincrew asks you to turn your PDA off if it contains transmitters, no one has yet told me I need to shut my GBA off on long flights... not to mention that keeping them seperate allows me to pick and choose what to have along.

Thats almost the problem I have, I dont want to carry a PDA, Phone, MP3 Player and Camera, and have a nice thumbboard for typing. Nothing exists yet, but the Nokia 7700 is out, and we will see it in the USA in 3 months. Almost everything but the darn thumb-board.

Just dont care for for SSH'ing without a thumb-board. Personal choice, but this offers everything but. Same size as the NGage, but has a true 640x480 screen. Thou I think you hold it taco style to talk.

The problem with that credit card size PDA, looks like it would break in half. Thou 320x240 screen size is healthy.

How about Nokia 7200 Nokia

Everything in the parent's post has been copied verbatim from that discussion. To wit:

• infoSync's coverage (Score:5, Informative)
  by holygoat (564732) on Tuesday October 28, @06:11AM (#7327703) http://www.infosyncworld.com/news/n/4237.html
  
  Pictures, and running a damn sight faster than Nokia's site for me!
  --
  -Rich [ Reply to This ]
  • 1 reply beneath your current threshold.

  Nice try, but it's no Sidekick (Score:5, Informative)
  by ChaoticChaos (603248) * <l3sr-v4cf@sp[ ]x.com ['ame' in gap]> on Tuesday October 28, @06:14AM (#7327726) I keep waiting for a device that has the functionality of my T-Mobile Sidekick (IM, email, web browsing, phone, scheduler, notes, etc.) that is as thoughtfully made (screen flips up to reveal a solid thumb-board and every bit of data I enter is automatically backed up on T-Mobile's servers) that is anywhere close to the price point ($300).
  
  I bet this Nokia device is plenty expensive and I could send out an email 10 times faster with my Sidekick thumb-board than you could peck one out with the stylus on this device (if you could find your stylus ;-) ).
  
  http://www.t-mobile.com/products/overview.asp?ph on eid=195184
  
  [ Reply to This ]

  • 8 replies beneath your current threshold.

  640x320 is pretty good! (Score:5, Interesting)
  by jeroenb (125404) on Tuesday October 28, @06:25AM (#7327812)
  (http://slashdot.org/) First thing I checked was ofcourse the screen's resolution and it turns out it sports 640x320 [nokia.com]. That's very good! Especially since close competitors (like the P900) only have 320x208 [sonyericsson.com]. Even some of the big-screen PDA's currently out like the Palm Tungsten T3 and the clamshell Sony Clie's only have 480x320. Even Sony's latest UX50 has that resolution [clieplaza.com] and if I'm not mistaken so does the latest Zaurus.
  
  640x320 is finally something you can seriously browse the web on!
  [

http://www.infosyncworld.com/news/n/4237.html [infosyncworld.com]

Pictures, and running a damn sight faster than Nokia's site for me!

First thing I checked was ofcourse the screen's resolution and it turns out it sports 640x320 [nokia.com]. That's very good! Especially since close competitors (like the P900) only have 320x208 [sonyericsson.com]. Even some of the big-screen PDA's currently out like the Palm Tungsten T3 and the clamshell Sony Clie's only have 480x320. Even Sony's latest UX50 has that resolution [clieplaza.com] and if I'm not mistaken so does the latest Zaurus.

640x320 is finally something you can seriously browse the web on!

Stop complaining. These ugly & expensive & too big devices with too many funktions are the ones witch are making technology to walk forward. You don't have to buy it, some tech freaks will, and thx to them next generation devices are actually better.

the opera guys might be making real money now and i've got to say i'm happy for them. this and the other nokia series 60/90 phones all use opera for their web browser. that and a design win with adobe, and the fact that it runs natively on windows, linux, freeBSD, AND solaris. well, i think it's worth applauding the fact that small innovative comapnise CAN actually succeed on merit! well done guys... :-)

I keep waiting for a device that has the functionality of my T-Mobile Sidekick (IM, email, web browsing, phone, scheduler, notes, etc.) that is as thoughtfully made (screen flips up to reveal a solid thumb-board and every bit of data I enter is automatically backed up on T-Mobile's servers) that is anywhere close to the price point ($300).

I bet this Nokia device is plenty expensive and I could send out an email 10 times faster with my Sidekick thumb-board than you could peck one out with the stylus on this device (if you could find your stylus ;-) ).

http://www.t-mobile.com/products/overview.asp?ph on eid=195184

There isn't a phone with all your requirements. However, Nokia 6600 comes close. It looks a bit bulky but in reality it's quite small. Ericsson's P900 is quite interesting as well.

Both phones have a camera but I believe no one forces you to use it...

3300 is Series 40.

See: Nokia Developer Platforms

First thing I checked was ofcourse the screen's resolution and it turns out it sports 640x320. That's very good! Especially since close competitors (like the P900) only have 320x208. Even some of the big-screen PDA's currently out like the Palm Tungsten T3 and the clamshell Sony Clie's only have 480x320. Even Sony's latest UX50 has that resolution and if I'm not mistaken so does the latest Zaurus.

640x320 is finally something you can seriously browse the web on!