New T-Mobile phone

[fuzzyjay]

Is anybody on T-Mobile and happy with their phone?

My SDA has died after a year and after I left it out in the rain. I need to get a new phone tomorrow and I'm researching what to get.

I do some texting so a decent text entry system would be nice. The SDA has a good system but a terrible keyboard. I don't care about a camera, or MP3 players, or ringtones.

Comments

[33mhz.livejournal.com]

I like my phone. It's a blackberry pearl 8100. It has a little trackball in the center (the 'pearl', I guess.) and a 5 x 3 key number pad with a qwerty layout, roughly 2 letters associated with each key. The combination of those two features makes it surprisingly easy for me to text on, but your mileage may vary.

I also get copies of my work email sent to it. It's nice.

[holy13nation.livejournal.com]

I'm on T-Mobile and they've been good to me. But I'm in the UK and we have a totally different set up.
No idea about the phone...it's red and white and I can make my own ingtones which kept me amused for about 7 minutes. I remain willfuly unaware of anything else it may do.

[notdefined.livejournal.com]

I'm happy. But then I live in cell-hell. T-Mobile is about the only company not gobbled up by SBC, much in the way that the spiders ate the parent in Lost in Space. I like independents and besides, my T-Mobile hotspot is damned cheap when combined with my cell service. I have a Razr and have been quite pleased with it. I'm waiting for Apple to find a way to get around the at&t (lower case) deal and let other cellular companies offer the iPhone, hopefully at a more reasonable price.

[theoctothorpe.livejournal.com]

The nokia N95 is a fantastic phone, but until the iPhone, ALL phones are going to suck. What's the budget for the phone?

[furr-a-bruin.livejournal.com]

I'm not on T-Mobile and I don't know if you'll even find this useful - but one of the features I specifically got the phone I have (Moto V325 via Verizon) for is the GPS functionality. I used the month's free trial of "VZ Navigator" during my trip to Sturgis last summer, and the "find me a nearby ... [restaurant|motel|gas station]" thing was fantastic.

[mettle-metal.livejournal.com]

Don't know what T-Mobile has available, but I wholeheartedly recommend anything by Nokia.

For one thing, their texting system is definitely a heck of a lot quicker and easier to use than Motorola's and some other phone manufacturers.

But really, the best part about Nokia's is that they're freaking indestructible. I am not easy on any sort of, well, anything. My first Nokia had a fold-out keyboard (European QWERTY). A friend of a friend had the same phone. Said friend got mad one day when he was at work, and threw his phone at a fiberglass window, and it then landed on the concrete floor and bounced multiple times. Some bits of the casing broke off. The bits of the casing snapped right back on (multiple anchor points) and only came off if you tried to take them off, and otherwise the phone suffered no damage. Kept working.

The two Nokias I had both occasionally got damp (stand under a tree or awning while texting? Pssh), and suffered no ill consequences.

Another friend had a Nokia and decided it'd be fun to toss it around in a park. It landed in a puddle. Took them a while to find it (it was at night, and he had the silly thing on silent, and it was face down, so they couldn't see the screen light up when calling it), and it was still fine.

Sure, they're not as sleek as, well, practically anything else on the market. But they're freaking tanks, and it's still possible to find Nokias that don't have all the frills you don't need. As soon as my Motorola RAZR piece of crap dies (or possibly earlier if it gives me more cause to hate it), I will be going back to Nokia.

[urbear]

Both my ex and I have a T-Mobile Dash (A.K.A. the HTC Excalibur), and we both love the thing (he's using it on T-Mobile, and I'm cheating and using it on Cingular). It's probably the best Windows Mobile Smartphone ever built, with both an excellent (and rugged) industrial design and the best signal reception I've ever seen from any phone.

Coincidentally, T-Mobile posted a free Windows Mobile 6 upgrade for the Dash to their site today. I just installed it and I'm delighted; the voice command feature alone is providing hours of entertainment.

If you do get a Dash, it may be both application-locked and SIM-locked. It's not hard to unlock both.

Geek weakness

[fuzzyjay.livejournal.com]

I was weak and got the Dash... on the theory that the more things you can play with the more fun it will be... and the generally-held opinion that it's a better phone than the SDA.

[marmtx.livejournal.com]

*purrs* But what do you want from the phone? :) If you don't care for UI get one of the Motorolas (slimmer flip one is KRZR I think, and now they have slider one too)
My SDA still works, but I've promised myself not to buy any phone with "Control Pimple" on it. Has to have flat central key

Pearl

[ursusarctos.livejournal.com]

I'm also using the Blackberry 8100 (Pearl). The battery life is excellent. The signal pickup is a vast improvement over any Moto or Sony/Ericsson phone I've had.
It works nicely with the Mac. It'll sync with iCal/AddressBook/Mail. Blackberry bundles PocketMac for sync, but I prefer to use Missing Sync.
The ONLY thing I miss from my Razr is Bluetooth syncing. You have to hook-up via USB with the Pearl.
If you dislike tiny keys, the Pearl might not be for you. I like the SureType tech. It trains well and gets smarter the more you use it.
I paid more for the phone so I would only have a 1 year contract. that's worked best for me, as I'm tough on phones and like flashy new toys too.