For the last couple of months, I've been using a Nokia N70 phone. It's an upgrade from Vodafone in Ireland, and it's unlocked so it works with my mobile phone accounts in the US, UK, and Spain, as well as Ireland of course.
I had wanted to upgrade to an N91, but the sales associated warned me off it because of memory problems (perhaps this problem which James Walker reports here). Apparently they were getting a lot of N91 problems reported, so I was recommended the N70 instead.
I find sometimes that my usage of this phone means that I am in kind of "mobile phone future". Here are a couple of examples:
- Recently I was in line waiting for a flight from Brazil to Boston, via Washington DC. The United staff told me that the flight was likely to be cancelled. One option was to fly via Chicago instead. But there was some nasty weather heading towards Chicago. So the choice was to stay near the airport until an early-morning flight which may operate, or go to Chicago and risk serious delays there. Standing in line at the airport, I was able to use my N70 to look up tomorrows hour-by-hour weather forecast for Chicago O'Hare airport and then to look up United's schedule. I had all this information available to me, through the phone. The guy in front of me in line, a US Marine flying under orders, didn't have access to this information, and neither did the United staff themselves.
- I use my phone for location-based services, traffic information, product price comparisons, and driving directions, today.
- My office phone system is configured in such a way that I can pick up on a cellphone or the regular office phone, depending on what is closer to hand.
- My phone downloads up-to-date feeds from the Guardian, the Irish Times, and the Boston Globe, so that these newspapers are always literally at hand for me
- My phone acts as an MP3 player, silencing the music when a call comes though, and automatially syncing with my music collection.
Now, these are usually things which are seen as being part of "the future". I think this is really a case of William Gibson's quote that "The future is here. It's just not evenly distributed yet."
Of course, smart phones are not as easy to use as they could be, but what I've seen from Nokia (and Sony Ericsson) is that they are getting a lot better at that.
12:54:44 PM 
|
