My much-abused smartphone, an i-Mate SP3i, went to its grave recently, the LCD screen having mysteriously gone batshit overnight. I don't recall dropping or crushing it but there you go. It's dead.
So, what better time to upgrade?
I'm absolutely smartphone-bound, since I've found calendar, task and email integration to be indispensable, and I like to be able to use my phone as a portable media player. Smartphones aren't cheap, so scouring EBay for a replacement within the short-term replacement budget was a frustrating exercise. This close to the Newton's Birthday holiday means that the budget was around the AU$500 mark max. I found an i-Mate SP5 (desirable) for the price but was beaten to the jump by another bidder. I also passed by an SP3i or two, rejecting these on the grounds that my previous SP3i lost its joystick within about a month of arriving. There were some older model XPhone and SP2 type models, but not a lot.
At this point, a thought crossed my mind. What's wrong with a PocketPC? Bigger screen, more features, and it's a phone. A bit big, sure, but we're not talking laptop territory. From this starting point I stumbled onto a used O2 XDA Atom, which is slick, small, full-featured and bundled with Windows Mobile 5.0. The O2 website even proudly declares it the world's smallest multimedia PDA phone. And it was the right price. Sold to the guy in the Penny Arcade t-shirt!
The phone arrived very quickly, having trekked to my house in Sydney's Inner West all the way from... Sydney's Inner West. I took it off to work and eagerly unpacked it, as there's little I like better than to unpack a new geek toy. Turns out it's just right. Hardly any bigger than the smartphone, it weighs in at a hefty 180g and boasts a 2.7in touchscreen, and comes with communication over phone, GPRS, USB sync, infrared, Bluetooth 1.2 and 802.11b wireless. The sound quality far surpasses my previous phone, but on the downside I've found the battery life to be, at best, short. Luckily it can charge over USB so if I find myself a little flat, the nearest computer doubles as a fuel station.
So far, very pleased indeed.