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Best Phone For a Wi-Fi-Only Location?
bendodge writes "I am planning on heading to a university in a remote area with very poor cellular service (the only signal is spotty Verizon voice, no data). However, the entire campus is thoroughly blanketed in Wi-Fi. I am trying to find the best and most economical 'Wi-Fi phone' or else hack one together. Belkin/Netgear sell what is essentially a portable Skype device for $180. These folks recommend outfitting an iPod Touch with a mic and VoIP apps. I am looking for something that can make and receive calls to and from landlines with incoming call notification. What experiences have Slashdot readers had and what would you recommend?"
Only if you install Debian on it. The people who designed Maemo decided to throw away all the Debian best practices and as a result Maemo is riddled with dependency problems and nearly always requires you to do a wipe and reinstall whenever there are updates from Nokia. And with Meego, rather than see these problems for what they are and fix them, they decided to make all the same mistakes all over again but with rpm instead of deb.
Apple will have all manor of roadblocks set up against using an iPod touch, like no multitasking, pulling telephony applications, etc. Just avoid Apple.
Imho, you should look at the Nokia N900 and Nokia's Symbian phones, but Android also offers support for Skype and SIP via third party applications. Symbian includes a separate SIP application from Nokia, and a Skype application exists too. You'll find suitable Symbian phones for way less than Android.
N900s however offer truly integrated SIP and Skype, which beats the pants off third party applications. You shouldn't expect that you'll use the N900 like a little computer however, sure the physical keyboard beats the pants off an iPhone's virtual keyboard, but we're still talking a very small keyboard.
The Christian religion has been and still is the principal enemy of moral progress in the world. -- Bertrand Russell
Or get yourself a cheap PSP with Skype on it and blow the piece of shit iPhone away.
Still waiting on Serviscope_minor to wake up to fucking reality and realize that Jessica Price isn't going to fuck him.