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What WAP Phones Do You Use?
Splunge asks: "I'm looking into buying a new mobile phone (in North America) with a good WAP browser, Internet access, and the general spiffy phone features. I'm assuming I'd want one with a fairly large screen (6 lines at least, maybe more) and also good battery life, etc. So far I've found the Nokia 7160/7190, the Mitsubishi T250/T255, or maybe the Sprint PCS NP1000. They look decent but I haven't seen them in person so I don't know. I'm also considering the new VisorPhone but wonder if a Visor for a phone would be too bulky. Any ideas on some good models and what to look for? Even a good Web site for cell phone reviews might help. I've found fairly little."
...could you also see if you can find anthing on those cell phone blockers? I heard some restauraunts in France had a way of interfering with cell phone signals so people could dine in peace. Has anyone come up with a personal anti-cell phone device? Maybe some kind of visor unit, I don't know.
Or a directional signal that would cover the two or three blocks ahead of me as I ride my bike through the city. Drivers who I am about to encounter would have their phone calls cut off as I approached, and the sudden sensory deprivation would cause them to look around through the window of their jeep in search of some replacement stimulation. Moving objects, such as me approaching on my bike, might be just exciting enough to grab their attention, especially if there were bright colors. Conceivably, they would be willing to react to the world around them during this dead-phone period, but could return to talking as soon as I and my handy device had safely moved out of the area.
Ambulances and fire trucks could use this too. Let me know what you find. Thanks.
I have a Sprint PCS Touchpoint 120 and it's pretty nifty. It handles the essential phone basics very well - a reasonable battery life and good coverage around town and the city (town = Boulder, CO, city = Denver). The signal easily gets lost if I go up into the mountains, but that's to be expected. I am a little wary of their billing / web ordering process though - when I signed up they accidentally created two accounts in my name and billed me an extra $50 that I didn't owe before they eventually got it sorted out. Finally, their web site is also often overloaded if you want to check or pay your account online.
The WAP features were quite a fun toy for the first week or so, but you can't really do any serious stuff with 6 lines of text. I find myself using it occasionally to check my email and get movie times when I'm outside (one of the dangers of being in Boulder, I suppose). Look on Yahoo! for a WAP directory. Note that sending mail is possible but requires much patience, and there is no direct POP3/SMTP support (web email like Yahoo! works just fine). It has a secure WAP implementation of some sort, so you can happily buy stuff online from anywhere. The phone also has some basic PIM features, but I largely ignore them as I also have a Palm. I think I could plug my Palm into this phone and get online that way, but I've not yet had the urge to try.
In short: I love this phone. As long as you don't want the world, you should be fine with whatever Sprint WAP-enabled phone takes your fancy. You mention the NP1000 - I had a look at one in the store and I didn't like it. Sure, it has a larger screen - but it looked suspiciously fragile, and it was only single band (ie: no analog roaming).
I did find some reviews on Epinions, so go have a read. There was a mobile phone section up on the Deja.com buying forums, but they're gone now that Deja has reverted to being a usenet feed (yay!).
If you primarily need a new mobile phone - get one and enjoy WAP as a toy. If you need full web access (or if the phrase: "mobile ssh or telnet client" starts you drooling), get a VisorPhone (or wireless Palm if you don't mind not being able to make voice calls) - but the monthly subscription fee might be astronomical compared to the 1500-minute per month holiday offers I've seen Sprint pushing recently.
- Chris.Once Bluetooth comes out, the (wireless) combination of a packet-switching phone with fast data and a PDA like the Palm or PocketPC will wipe the floor with WAP. I'm usually fairly complementary about emerging portable tech, but WAP is a poor bet...
I'm looking into buying a new mobile phone (in North America) with a good WAP browser, internet access, and the general spiffy phone features.
WAP is terrible. It's slow, the gateways are unreliable, screens are too small... And if you're wanting to do real show-off things like check your Yahoo Mail account, realize that filling in a username/password on a WML form is a very trying exercise.
Check out Jakob Neilson's WAP Field Study. Look at the times to accomplish simple tasks with WAP.
I purchased a Nokia 7110 six months ago, and never bothered using the WAP features after the first couple of days. It collects dust on my shelf now, replaced by a (non-WAP) 8890 that is much more stylish, can stay comfortably in my front pocket while I'm sitting down, and works nearly anywhere on the planet that cellular service is available.
Get a phone that's just a phone. If you really want wireless 'net access, get a Palm Vx and a Minstrel.
Look, I'm sure there's a "killer app" for celphones but I haven't found it yet. Movie-times? Got an audio service that does that and aside from the Santa-on-speedballs quality of the announcer it works fine. Same for most of the other services - nothings uniquely useful, nothing pressingly important to me.
It's all the shopping-power of an inflight magazine with the information services of an 80's "press-1-for..." service. Oh - and for stocks - what percentage of the population really needs constant access to the stock listings?
I'm not being Grinch here, I've a WAP-enabled phone myself & played around with it. Yawn. Go find some friends/co-workers/other locals & ask them what they use their WAP phones for - most of them *don't*.
Buy a phone for size & weight, buy it for audio quality, but it for battery life, buy it for ringtones if you want, but don't make WAP an important criteria unless you're in the WAP business.
-- Michael
ps - Motorola StarTAC 7867W - small, rugged, great battery life, excellent audio quality (esp. with the EVRC codec turned on.) All of the bells & whistles plus WAP. CDMA 800/1900 & analog 800 MHz. My only complaint is that the Data Kit (cable & software) costs US$100.
I don't read ACs: If a post isn't worth so much as a nom de plume to its author then I wont bother either.
Has anyone come up with a personal anti-cell phone device?
In the US, use or sale of these would be illegal. The FCC specifically bars devices that intentionally cause interference. Owning, manufacturing, marketing, offering for sale or operating a cell phone jammer is punishable by an $11,000 fine and up to a year in prison for each offense.
The laws relating to this vary as you move around the world. There are companies in England, Japan, Taiwan, and Israel that manufacture jammers. This Link should tell you more. According to this article, Hubgiant of Taipei, Taiwan sells a personal Cellular telephone jammer. There are others around, but I'm sure that there are plenty of scams for them out there- if you get a "illegal" jammer in the US, and it doesn't work, who are you going to complain to?
As I have read somewhere in the WAP or HDML info pages, the gateway is what's holding your keys.. When you reconnect to the gateway, you start a ssl like connection to the gateway and then the gateway figures out what session you had by your telephone number and then continues from that session. It's just the wap server protocols. Quite nifty.. and also Quite annoying too.. and Quite insecure if the fbi ever decided to tap your cell phone.. they could probably get in any site you were previously on.. unless you click on logout :P
Consider yourself blessed if you are sneezed on by a dragon and only get wet, it could have been a fireball.
Just for the record, when I use my Motorola Timeport (look! it's a StarTAC! oh, wait... it's silver...) to check my yahoo mail account, I only had to enter the login and password once. I don't know if it's the site, the gateway, or the phone saving the data, but you do only have to type it once.
Now I just start my browser (4 clicks), and then press 5 (for yahoo) and 1 (for mail) and I'm reading my list. 6 clicks isn't bad.
On the other hand, sending mail of any length is out of the question unless you're REALLY stuck somewhere for a while.
As a plus, the timeport is pretty much just a phone-- the screen is tiny (4 lines) and wap access is more or less tacked on as an afterthought. Works for me, though... small, long battery life, and a quick way to see if anything important is lurking in my inbox.
I went out and bought the new Samsung SCH-8500. I found this phone to be very nice, it has a WAP browser and a 6-line screen. I use it for getting directions, movie times, weather, news, scores, and all kind of stuff on-line. The nice part of the phone is that Samsung has a nice text entry mode called T9 that lets you type words and only having to press each key once. For the most part, you can type short messages up rather quickly. It basically works by matching up the key sequence with words it has in an internal dictionary. The phone is also dual-band, which I really wanted, and has a good battery life and short charge time. It also has a number of PIM features you can use as well. The calendar is really nice. If you don't want the PIM, you can get tthe SCH-850 (if you can find it) and save $20-$30. Anyway, it also fits nicely in my small change pocket of my pants and is less than 5 oz. The only thing that I dislike is that it seems to lose connection while in standby easier than some phones when I am in some large buildings, but it stays connected better if you are talking on it. Other than that it is very nice.
My company develops applications for the wireless Internet -- phone, PDA, what-have-you. The general consensus among the developers here is the Mitsubishi T255 is the best WAP phone out there. The screen is HUGE. Predictive text input, 7.1 oz with battery. This Geek.com review might help.
That being said, I have to admit that I don't use the WAP capabilities that much. It was cool when I first got it, but the novelty has worn off. It does come in handy for looking up phone numbers and addresses, or getting driving directions. It has been a real lifesaver a couple of times. But on average I probably use WAP only once or twice a week at most.
I use AT&T, and the nice thing about it is that the basic WAP service is free for unlimited usage. So you have the capability when you need it, but it doesn't cost you anything
Disclaimer: I am a consultant currently working as a WAP developer for AT&T's PocketNet service. This message should not be considered an endorsement for AT&T's service.
-Vercingetorix
-Vercingetorix
"Necessitas non habet legem." -St. Augustine