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Hands on Review of pdQ Palm/Cellphone
hal-j writes "Ed Keyes, author of HackMaster for the Palm, has a hands on review of the way cool Qualcomm pdQ Palm/cellphone combo (which is now available)." For those who aren't paying attention, the pdQ is that half Palm III half Cell Phone mutant thing that actually looks quite interesting. Worth a gander.
Here is a potential problem for this type of the devices: As you know all cellphones has to be switched off while the airplane is in the air. I remember that not long ago there was an articles about one guy in UK who had got a year in prison for typing an e-mail message on his cellphone. The story was smth like this: a flight attendant asked that guy to switch off his phone but he refused saying that he is not using a phone but is just entering a message. In fact airplane is a very logical place to use a PDA. Isn't it a problem? Does Qualcomm pdQ allows to switch off transmitter/reciever while running a PDA? Will flight personnel understand that you are NOT using a phone? Is pdQ worth of its money if you cannot use it in flight? It seems that buying a PDA and a cellphone separately will be simply cheaper.
Anyone who hasn't owned a Qualcomm phone ought to think twice about buying one of these because they may not know what they're getting into.
In a nutshell, Qualcomm phones are pieces of crap. The original one that Bell Atlantic started selling when they first started adding digital service in CT was a nice enough phone, althoguh heavy. The flip up earpiece got loose fairly easily and the phone would randomly drop calls as a result.
Replaced that with a Q-phone when I switched to Sprint. Three months later the case was cracked and the antenna mount was broken. They replaced it as all of them had been recalled for that problem. Replacement phone had the same problem. I taped it up and dealt with it for almost nine months. Got sick of it, and replaced it again. Sprint gave me a hassle about it because the warranty on the original phone had expired, even though the second one wasn't a year old. I pointed out that they'd already admitted it was a problem with the phone and the "solution" of taking away my belt clip hadn't prevented it from breaking again.
So they finally gave me another one. That one didn't want to talk to their network. Reprogrammed it twice at the prompting of their tech support. No luck. Bring it back the next day, and get another one. Make a test call. That one works. (yay!)
That night, discover the voicemail and info buttons don't work. Neither does the * or #. Jump around an curse a lot.
Return phone, and tell them generally where they can stick their Qualcomm phones. Buy Startac. Talk for three times longer. Charge the phone almost ten times less often. Rejoice in a phone noticable lighter.
I can't imagine the pdQ is much better...