re-up

if i renew my verizon contract right now, i can get a smartphone for $50. this is better than what i’d get by switching to at&t, and vastly cheaper than the umpc’s i want. ergo, it’s actually practical.

the centro runs palm os, which is kind of clunky, but mostly because it’s five years old. it is, however, designed for mobile devices, runs snappily, and has plenty of useful applications. a tiny but functional qwerty keyboard, touchscreen, 1.3mp camera of good enough quality, and micro-sd slot means this would be a good companion to my pocket notebook.

meanwhile, the htc smt5800 has a vastly larger and more usable keyboard, but fails in every other aspect. it runs windows mobile, which is clunky and badly adapted to mobile devices, but looks pretty. it lacks a touchscreen, so all the navigation is done with the tiny dpad. it has a 2mp camera, but tints everything orange. and the ram is barely enough to handle the operating system, whereas the centro has more than enough.

what i think i’m leaning towards is just getting a phone as a phone with some basic applications; the centro would let me type stuff out and edit shopping lists, which is 90% of what i’m looking for anyways. anything else, media playback or whatever, would be better served by the 32gb ipod touch.

in fact, the ipod touch has everything i want short of a tactile keyboard. or something like the nokia e90 running xp. (actually, the e90 would be fantastic, if i had the $800…)

i think my ideal setup would be a 32gig ipod touch, the nokia 7380, and an eee. i wouldn’t be surprised if, a year from now, that’s about what i’m running with.

of course, if i stick with verizon, i can’t use that nokia ridiculousness. which is back to jumping ship to at&t and sim card based freedom.