Having trouble sleeping tonight--unusual for me, but it happens occasionally.
So I'm shopping for new cell phones for me and Gerald. I've been using a Sidekick with TMobile for over a year, and while I love its features, the reception on it is crappy, and the keyboard is getting sticky. Gerald has a 3yo Samsung phone with Sprint that's serviceable, but the power seems to go off without warning, which is not a good thing.
We need to consolidate the plans onto one service, so we can cut costs, share minutes and have free mobile-to-mobile time. Plus I'd really like a cameraphone, especially now that Flickr has so many camphone-friendly features.
After a surfing Amazon's cell phone offerings, and the sites of the major providers, I wasn't seeing much that had the range of features I wanted at a price that seemed reasonable--particularly since I needed two phones, not just one.
I finally ended up on Wirefly, where I found some remarkably good deals, including this one on a pair of Motorola v300 phones. What's not to like about two free cameraphones and $100 back? Seems too good to be true, though, so feedback on Wirefly and/or the v300 would be greatly appreciated before I take the plunge.
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Update, Saturday afternoon
Well, after hitting a few local stores, checking out newspaper ads, and spending a lot of time on Amazon and Wirefly, I've decided that I'm better off switching to either Verizon or Cingular for broader local and travel coverage (especially when we're visiting family in Alabama). The local stores have poor selections and lousy specials, so online seems like a better approach.
I think I've narrowed it down to either the Sony Ericsson T637 (free after rebates) or the Motorola V400g, $50/each after rebates.
The Motorola seems like a nicer phone overall, with lots of useful features (including one of the kids' and my favorite games, Bejeweled...). It's also a flip phone, which Gerald and I both prefer. The Ericsson has Bluetooth and better battery life, however, and is a little cheaper. (The Motorola V600 would add Bluetooth, but it would be $100/phone after rebates, which is a little steep for us.)
There are also good deals on Samsung SCH-a610
Right now the Bluetooth doesn't seem terribly important, but I'm wondering if I'll end up regretting not having it.
samsung is a great product: maybe you can have a sample list of hypothetical medicines to try an idea out: I have a sony erikson which is great. both phones can do the same thing
it could be a list of vitamins or placebos. maybe have a pretend med list and see if the mobloging can prevent a medical mistake: application for the elderly> they show up to the docs and share either a bluetoothed list and it gets updated and emailed to a remote family member who can't make due to illness.
i think that these phones are a way of bringing a health care network (barry wellman idea of network, not managed care)together.
have an idea about p2p and survey taking on these phones. download games like protocals to create an interesting mobloging cohort.
there is this great math/computer science stuff coming out of cornell: gossip and p2p in terms of correcting some problems with file sharing using probability models.
maybe a survey on how a med list gets changed and what factors lead to errors with the memory impaired.
they now have data bases for sugar levels, or blood pressure readings: infrared is now part of alot of glucometers and we could do the same with a digital sphygometer.
Liz, I am in LUV with my Treo. 'sall I can say. It has changed my life.
i guess identifing the frontline network is key to making the above rough draft make more sense. furthermore, the ability to switch a phone to a linux based protocal can happen with the motorola: so one would have to make the programs available, the protocols easy to replicate; and the ability for persons to callaborate via wiki and blog easy.
one can tabulate the data from each frontline network on the blog with the same tech technorati uses.
google gmails as the templates for surfing case histories and finding hits of symptoms or adverse drug reactions to calculate prevelence: or how many times someone writes improvement to measure outcome.
so the gmail linked to the cellphone would be the easiest way to use the existing infrastructure to try the idea out.
I think if we theatrically tried it out with the help of Decon Gallery, we can figure out what things to tell an IRB. also can figure out how to get that markov model to get at a real time Bayes prevelance without flooding all the networks...towards an acuarate sampling...
as you can see, i have put alot of raw thought into it: i could do all of the work prior to an MPH and have the blueprint of entire thesis floating around these blogs...just google search stefanos pantagis to see how my posting work like a glog...
stef
PS: my wife just read this and said, why are you doing all this????
http://networks.silicon.com/mobile/0,39024665,39121538,00.htm
You have to watch out and read the fine print for places like wirefly.com and letstalk.com -- With both of those companies, you actually sign two contracts, one with cingular, and one with wirefly/letstalk. Therefore, if you ever need to cancel, thats two early termination fees that you have to pay. I've heard mixed reviews of these companies in the past. Also, www.howardforums.com is the ultimate site for mobile phone info. It's almost too much info at times.
I just switched to Cingular in Rochester and I couldn't be happier. Their new coverage maps are out in stores (not online however) and they are really giving Verizon a run for their money. Verizon is too expensive for what you get, IMO. I've never had a problem with coverage here all over Rochester.
I also got the V600 and BT works great with both my mac & pc. The Moto HS810 BT headset is also killer. I'll never use wires again! My friend just switched and got the SE T637, also a solid phone. The flip vs. candy bar design is really the only main difference between the two. Also, I believe that the T637 supports SyncML, while the V600 doesn't, so the T637 will be supported first and therefore probably work better with iSync on the Mac.
Also, buying Cingular phones at BestBuy is usually the best way to go for the lowest prices with no other gimmicks, etc. They only make you sign a one year contract to get their lowest price, while the Cingular store on Winton makes you sign a 2 year contract for their best price (which is usually higher than BestBuy anyway).
However, I've heard that Cingular stores are not as willing to bend over backwards if you have a phone problem if you did not purchase the phone directly from them. So it's a tradeoff.
One more thing. You mentioned Amazon.com. They just started selling Cingular service, and currently have no way to port your number over and still be elligible for the Amazon.com rebates. So if you want to port your numbers from T-Mo over, you'd be out of luck going with Amazon.
I have the Motorola v400 with Cingular and I love the phone and love the plan. My fiance and I share minutes and get free mobile-to-mobile so we have a ton of minutes roll over each month. We also have the nationwide/no roaming plan and it has been brilliant.
I have two beefs with the phone: it's nearly impossible not to hit the site buttons when you're cramming the phone into your purse or pocket. The phone cover mitigates it slighty, but it's still somewhat irritation. The other complaint is about polyphonic phones in general: It's hard to hear it ring. The only loud tones on this phone are the non-polyphonic ones.
Make that side buttons.
So I saw on Flickr that you've bought the Motorolas - enjoy! I just bought a Sony Ericsson Z600 which I love except I haven't got the email working yet so I haven't got to try out the mobile blogging thing yet. I absolutely LOVE bluetooth and use it a lot for syncing my phone to my computer an d browsing files, though I've not yet used the phone to control the computer (powerpoints, itunes etc) other than for fun. I love be9ing able to sync my calender and addresses and sending SMSes without taking my phone out of its bag. There are other ways of connecting a phone to a computer though and I'm sure your phone'll be great.
You should have tried Sony Ericson because it have more good features. Though they say that Motorola have more battery capacity than its rival.