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."

Comments

What's your priority: phone or mobile internet...?

[Chris Coster]

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.

Wait for bluetooth

[Kris_J]

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...

WAP = CRAP

[EuroBryce]

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.

*So* last month!

[maggard]

WAP phones are passé. For the screen to be any use they have to be too big, for the phone to be any convenience it's got to be too small. Plus what kind of 'web experience' is it when you're just scrolling through lists?

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.

Re:*So* last month!

[maggard]

OK - our experiences differ.

My sweetheart & I got matching StarTACs together, my keypad died the second day (top row wouldn't respond.) Took it in, got it replaced (no data transfer though) & both are working fine.

I looked at rhe Nokia's but for price/performance/frequencies the StarTAC came up better for me, YMMV.

I would recommend anyone buying a cellphone actually try a few calls on the two or three they come down to. We almost went with a Sanyo 3500 but after several tries from different locations turned it down - the sound quality just didn't compare to the StarTAC's.

Also look into which codec you're going to use. I drive through some spotty-coverage area's (I-89/I-93 through VT & NH) regularly and the EVRC codec has made a big difference in my marginal-quality. Instead of breaking up speech fades in & out, makes it much easier to follow what the speaker is saying.

Re:*So* last month!

[maggard]

BTW - to change the codec (vocoder) on many StarTACs:

Dial V-O-C-O-D-E and hit Fcn twice.
Sto to change
End to quit

Like I said, EVRC gives the best audio quality though there can be quirks with carriers that don't support it. Of course the tower can always over-ride your settings (think of them as 'requests'.)

I use EVRC locally and 13k roaming; my sweetheart use 13k exclusively and his can be 'choppy' to use during hand-offs and inside buildings.

Cell Phone Jammer

[Matt_Bennett]

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?

Re:Cell Phone Jammer

[Matt_Bennett]

If your resturant/store/whatever happens to be built with enough electo-magnetic sheilding that cellular devices can't effectively communicate within your establishment, I think you'd be in the clear.

Absolutely, shielding would be *very* expensive, and quite high maintainence. You would either need an "air-lock" style door, or a serpentine with RF-absorbent materials (the materials are very expensive, and it takes a lot of square footage). I saw a serpentine at a secure facility I visited once. They didn't want the airlock doors since the shielding used to seal those doesn't last too many cycles. For a truly RF tight facility, you also have to shield your power going in and out, and any sort of communication lines, because they can sometimes act as passive radiators. Just putting aluminum screens over the windows isn't enough. As you go up in frequency, the quality of the shielding has to go up- meaning smaller holes for the rf to go in and out. It would probably be cheaper just to hire a door-man that would frisk anyone that enters.

Re:Since you're looking up stuff anyway...

[Mike1024]

Hey,

...could you also see if you can find anthing on those cell phone blockers?

I have! There's a UK (where I am) company called SESP, website here. "All cellular telephones within the specified range of active SESP jammers are unable to make or receive calls, and calls in progress are immediately cut off when the unit is activated. 'No service' appears on the phone's LCD display. As soon as the jammer is switched off, the cellular service is immediately restored."

For GB£125 (less than $125), you can get thier Wave-Shield cellular jammer. 50m range and less that 75g, ideal to put in your pocket at a concert, if you can hack together a battery power source. They also have products up to a range of several kilometers, some rack-mounted. Cool!

Cguard also make a jammer-type product, but they don't have much in the line of priging details.

Interesting, eh?

Michael

...another comment from Michael Tandy.

WAP Phone - Samsung SCH-8500

[cokane]

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.

Mitsubishi T250

[jheinen]

I have a Mitsubishi T250, and I'm happy with it. The big screen really helps (10 lines using the small font). The T9 word-completion feature makes text entry very easy. I was surprised at how accurate it is.

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