Agylen

I’ve never been fond of gadgets, but this it seems like this is starting to change. Must be a side-effect of having switched to the Mac. First a new digital camera, then an iPod and now a smartphone.

I’ve always used cellphones for … well, placing and receiving phone calls, and nothing else. But now, with Bluetooth-enabled laptop and desktop computers, plus iSync, I figured I could do more.

The occasion presented itself when it dawned on me that, as we’re leaving for Mexico next week, we need a tri-band cellphone if we want to be able to call from there without being forced to use the hotel’s lines (and be screwed by them) or public phones.

So, I went shopping for a tri-band phone and after asking a couple of friends for advice, I bought a Nokia 6630. Now I’m the proud owner of a phone that has more connectivity options (SM/GPRS/EDGE/UMTS/WCDMA/BT/USB) than a laptop of not many years ago, which is fine as I plan to travel significantly more than I did in the past.

Maybe I’ll become a true mobile geek like Russell and start blogging about all the cool stuff that you can do with a Symbian phone. I’ve already got it to sync with my iMac, but not with the Powerbook. Apparently, the version of iSync that is in Panther does not support this phone, whereas the latest update for Tiger work fine. Time to upgrade the Powerbook, I guess.

I also did some web surfing. I had imagined that UMTS would be much much faster, but it’s actually pretty slow, at least in this area.

On a closing note, I put Nokia Smartphone Hacks on my Amazon.com wishlist. I guess that if you hold in your hand a machine with the power of a supercomputer, you’d better get the most out of it.