Your mobile phone provider offers an “over-the-air upgrade” to your phone. You're at the airport, about to leave for a week on the road. What do you do?

You say “yes” of course. This is not quite the same as saying “apt-get dist-upgrade” after all. Or, more accurately, it's just like that but your mobile phone is a lot less important than your laptop.

Anyway, wise or not, I let it rip. The results are pretty nice. The device still has some damned, stupid limitations, but the browser now supports Javascript. And tel: URIs, which is pretty neat. And the address book has fields for IM addresses, which could make FOAF associations simpler.

There are a bunch of other updates too.

I have a bit of a love-hate relationship with my Sidekick. Mostly, I love it, but some of its flaws really irritate me. However, now that the folks from Treo are in bed with Microsoft, I expect that device will develop irritating flaws of its own. (As far as I can see, the Treo 650 is the only serious competition for the Sidekick.)

I think I'll be sticking with my Sidekick.

Comments:

Have you checked the Nokia 770 Internet Tablet? It was just released last week. It has WiFi and bluetooth. The software platform is developed by a Nokia sponsored opensource project. Debian derived linux kernel. It is the size of a PDA but has 800x480 resolution which provides for an excellent web browsing experience. I prefer this approach of well designed components that work well together to the integrated all in one Treo type device.

Posted by Allen Halsey on 23 Nov 2005 @ 08:10pm UTC #

It looks interesting, but I'm hoping to stick with a device that combines a phone and a PDA. Still, I bet it's a nice device.

Posted by Norman Walsh on 24 Nov 2005 @ 06:23pm UTC #
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