Talking Point: Pocket PC or Smartphone?

[Guest Paul [MVP]]

Talking Point: Pocket PC or Smartphone?

In my daily life, I carry around a Smartphone (SPV C500) and a Pocket PC (iMate PDA2k), as I use functions that they both provide.

I use the C500 because I love T9 and it's small and light, and I use the Pocket PC because sometimes it's great to have the big screen, thumboard, SSH client and that kinda stuff.

My question for today is..

Do you use a Smartphone, Pocket PC or both... and have you tried each of them?

As an additional thing to think about... do you see the Pocket PC / Smartphone platforms becoming one? If so, how would you envisage it working?

Get posting guys (and gals) ;)

P

[Guest chucky.egg]

I've got a C500, which suits me fine

I like the size and weight, and it has just about all the functionality that I need.

I have thought about a Jam (in fact I nearly got one, only to discover no WiFi! doh!) but TBH right now I don't think there is anything that does that I would use to make it worth it.

As for the types merging. I doubt it, they serve very different markets. AFAIK you can't reduce a PPC to C500 size, and keep the "usability"

[Guest kyrkesmith]

I've got a C500, and an iPaq rx3715.

I got a Pocket PC long before I got a smartphone. I got an iPaq 3630, which was nice. Then I got a Smartphone (SPV Classic), and kept the Pocket PC, because I still found entering some data easier on the Pocket PC. Definately got used less though.

Nowadays, I tend to use my iPaq for listening to music, because I like the fact I can easily swap SD cards. Also, I like using my Sony Fontopia earphones, and it's simpler with a Pocket PC. Also, Pocket Word with my Think Outside bluetooth keyboard is better than anything I can do with my Smarphone.

If I have the two devices on me, I'll always use the Pocket PC if it can do what I want (i.e. not for text messaging and anything that require phone functionality). However, if I've only got the Smartphone, it can do almost everything the Pocket PC can.

I reckon that the two OSes will become one, but perhaps be more customisable so that you can disable features depending on the type of device. Maybe ultimately all Windowses will become one...

[Guest criscia]

I like smartphone the most because its so much like a computer which make it very familiar. and there are lots of freeware available that are very useable and easy to install.

ive tried the pocket pc and its kinda complicated to use.

it would be nice if they will decide to incorporate each others features into one unit.

[Guest brykins]

I used to have a Treo600 and it was great - the best pda/mobile combo I had ever seen but I moved to it from a Sony Clie and I could never get used to the 160x160 screen on the Treo compared to the 320x320 on the Clie....so it had to go.

It went and I got a Dell Axim X50v with the VGA screen and a Nokia phone. Loved the PDA but hated the phone so that had to go.

Then I made the mistake of getting my C500 to replace the Nokia.....why was it a mistake? Because I now carry the phone everywhere and the Axim is a £300 paperweight sitting on the desk 95% of the time. I *do* take it with me but I very rarely get to use it.

I love the screen resolution and touch screen of the Axim but it's too big to carry everywhere. I love the size and convenience of the C500 but the screen is too small to do decent email and notes on.

So - I am stuck in the middle - I have both a smartphone and a pocketpc but I need something a bit in the middle. For now, I am happy to carry the C500 all the time, but in an ideal world (and I hope that this is where development will take us), I'd like a unit about the size of the Jam but with a higher res screen and WiFi built in. That'd be the one that would replace both my devices and enable me to get the very best out of computing on the move.

[Guest Alex_le_brit]

I use the Smartphone the whole time, I've not been tempted to PPC mainly due to the price difference, are they really that much more expensive to produce than a Smartphone, or is it just that telecoms operators have no inlination to offer the same subsidies as they do for phones? The only real draw though was WiFi.

I find that the biggest thing that increased my Smartphone use is my £12 Eleksen Keyboard; suddenly I've gone from a phone/texting machine/mp3 player with occasional film viewer, to a serious e-mailer/basic word processor/blogging device.

Sure for text I'm still going to use Microsoft Word to format it, but I can now sit in the garden, or on the train and do all my typing, save as txt, then just open it in Word. For me it now does about 50% of my PC use. If I could get one with WiFi, I'd be suing it for about 80% of my current PC use.

I rather hope that the two platforms don't ever become one, surely that would mean getting a whole load of stuff in one or other program that you didn't need? If there's just one program for instance then all the software for a touch screen (from the PPC) would be installed on your Smartphone (and useless and taking up space). I remember noticing when I first got my SPV that there were a whole load of image files relating to PPC use (things with styluses, for example, just taking up space)

[Guest adchaffey]

I currently have a C500 and have had several smartphones before this. But I'm currently considering moving to a Pocket PC. I'm very tempted with the HTC Universal.

My friend recently did the same, sold his smartphone and bought a pocket PC. Although we frequently laugh at him when he whips it out in a night club to reply to a text message I still think it's a worthwhile upgrade. It's got quite a few functions that I really would like, especially WiFi and a huge screen for surfing the web, something which would make my like a whole lot easier. It also seems to be a whole lot more reliable than my damn smartphone, but I may regret this desision when I find out that WM5 on the HTC Universal is as reliable as lassie on speed!

[Guest Pondrew]

I use and carry my Pocket PC with me most of the time, only swapping the sim into my SPV E200 Smartphone when I'm going out clubbing, or similar.

Having a QWERTY keyboard on the Blue Angel (mines an MDA III from T-Mobile but it's the same device as Paul's Imate PDA2K) makes it as good as or better then a Smartphone in every way except form. It's too big and expensive to risk carrying with me sometimes is the only down side. This is enough of a downside though to ensure that the distinction between the two devices will continue for the foreseeable future as they will continue to be substitues to each other.

Even the Imate Jam, the first Smartphone sized Pocket PC, has failed to win over the majority of Smartphone users. That's gotta be telling.

Surprised to hear someone suggest the Pocket PC operating system is over complicated as I was worried it might be before getting it last January but haven't looked back since. If anything I'd say the Pocket PC is closer to a PC in terms of how you operate it and how everything is laid out.

[Guest martinlaidlaw]

After my MPx200 I decided to leap to the PPC platform and got myself the MDA3 on T-mobile, it is an impressive device but is just not practical to take with you all the time, so I got a C500 off of eBay to use as my second unit.

I was intending on switching between the two, but to be honest I've been using the C500 for weeks and only occasionally using the MDA3 at home with my wifi router for occasional browsing (don't even put my sim back in the MDA!)

Text messaging and general phone functions are a lot less fiddly on the C500, which is why I've stuck to it for my most used phone, the MDA3 is a great show off device for videos and web browsing etc. . . I will still bring it out now and again and I'm considering using it for in car GPS soon.

[Guest Samsonite]

I bought an E200 last year after seeing a mate with one… One frantic search across the south coast later and I was a smartphone convert. Six weeks later the C500 appeared!! Typical…

4 months later I found I needed/wanted SatNav and so went thru the choices of PDA or phone based.. I plumped for PDA cos of screen size and also I didn’t want to depend on the device being my personal phone. 6 months on, I have ditched the PDA, E200 and stuffed it all into a Magician – Qtek S100 – and I luuuuurve it!!

Over the time of having 3 devices on me at all times (work phone, PDA, E200) I found that my E200 rang less and less, the PDA was disappointing on battery and I could never escape the work phone.

I find that the Qtek is superb on all the main performance criteria I need. Either that or I am still blinded by the new toy syndrome. The screen size worries I had are unfounded – CoPilot is still perfectly visible and clear, the battery life is greatly improved over the PDA and I now have one less thing to carry around.

In terms of user interface differences, the PPC is less one-hand-friendly than the phone and physical size is not for everyone. My wife has little hands and cant really use the Qtek as a phone but I don’t have that trouble…

The functionality of the PPC over the E200 is less of an advantage but I think it is only time before I use the built in PowerPoint viewer and Pocket Excel etc but at the moment I cant say the PPC DOES more for me than the E200.

I can see the OS for PPC and Smartphone becoming one. The differences now are becoming less and less. It makes sense from an application development point of view and even from Microsoft’s to have a common platform. I’m no programmer so there could be a million reasons why it cant happen today but I reckon its only time…

[Guest justsomeone]

pocket pc or smartphone ? hmm... well after having several smartphones i decided to upgrade to a spv m2000. i can honestly say i'll never go back to anything other than pocket pc. a generous sized touch screen is so much easier to use then fiddly buttons and a piddly screen. saying that, i loved my spv and spv e200 but the spv m2000 has now spoiled me.

[Guest Alex_le_brit]

Even the Imate Jam, the first Smartphone sized Pocket PC, has failed to win over the majority of Smartphone users. That's gotta be telling.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

Isn't that a price thing though, they seem to be a lot more expensive than SmartPhones.

[Guest tendomentis]

pocket pc or smartphone ? hmm... well after having several smartphones i decided to upgrade to a spv m2000. i can honestly say i'll never go back to anything other than pocket pc. a generous sized touch screen is so much easier to use then fiddly buttons and a piddly screen. saying that, i loved my spv and spv e200 but the spv m2000 has now spoiled me.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

I still use my MPx200 everyday (WM2003 of course). I keep trying to justify upgrading to an imate sp3i or a jam, but I can't ever figure anything that those upgrades would do that my MPx200 doesn't already do.

I do miss the larger screen and the wifi, so I got a good used mobilepro 780 off ebay, refinished and repainted it, gave it a 512MB upgrade and the best wifi card for it and loaded with VNC. Now I can use my media server anywhere in the house (and that's all I would have done with a Pocket PC phone, plus the mobilepro 780 only cost a little more than a hundred USD).

[Guest tendomentis]

Oh, and the mobilepro 780 is a HPC, not a PPC, so I don't know if that qualifies or not for this poll ;)

Edited June 10, 2005 by guardedthought

[Guest JamieDow]

I use my C500 and an ipaq 2210. I mainly had the ipaq due to the tomtom sat nav but now I have tomtom mobile i'm not so sure i'll use it. I like the larger keypad but to be fair why I would want to carry a phone and PDA when my smartphone does everything I need I don't know.

IMHO I think smartphones are worth every penny. They are just as reliable nowadays and there is far more software available for them.

[Guest Mike Wagstaff]

I currently use an i-mate JAM, which is just about small enough to be pocketable, and offers all the advantages of the PPC OS.

The things I miss from my C500 days are the physical keypad (texting with a stylus on the tube is no fun) and the ability to use it one-handed. HTC will hopefully take care of the latter (a new JAM-sized PPC with a keypad) and Windows Mobile 5.0 should hopefully take care of the latter (the ability to use it one-handed).

For me, the PPC is definitely the way forward. The fact that WM 5.0 will allow you to run Smartphone software can only help on the road to convergence.

[Guest celica1.8st]

I started off with a PDA using tomtom, diary (sync'd with outlook), MP3 player. I then got the c500 and the pda now sits in a drawer! The c500 does everything I need and is small enough to easily fit in my pocket.

The smartphone doesn't seem to crash as much as the PDA either (might just be me though) - not one hard reset on the c500 in 4 months of ownership (well no hard resets on 2 c500's actually) whereas the pda kept crashing

[Guest jcjdoss]

In the past I would have told you one or the other. And I kept buying one then selling it to buy the other. Neither was complete in itself. I noe have a mpx220 and a Dell x50v. Owning both at the same time realize that owning both is perfect. The Dell does everything I need. But when I have to go out and be a little active, or to the church (I teach the kids) I find the MPx220 is perfect size wise. I don't have to worry about setting it down and losing it, or smashing it. So both together is the perfect combination. Neither are perfect by themsevles...for me that is.

Edited June 10, 2005 by jcjdoss

[Guest ZSX]

I'm afraid I'm rather prehistoric when it comes to hardware since I have an hp2210 and a Moto mPx200. The phone has gradually taken over the PDA, but it has been a rather painful process.

I started off with the hp2210 which I use principally on the commute to read eBooks and AvantGo, catch the odd film and answer the previous night's emails. I have a ThinkOutside keyboard which has really revolutionized data entry. I also use it to write notes in Word and update my logbook in Excel. For all these things a large screen and a large keyboard are essential. I even bought the Secure Digital Wifi card for the odd time when I feel like I need to surf the web, but to be honest it is not something I do much.

My most recent phone (prior to the MPx200) was a Nokia 6230. I continue to be very impressed with this phone, even if it is not smart. It plays videos and music, and you can download applications games onto it. It even has an email application and takes an expandable memory cards. The main strong points it has going for it is its size. You can slip it into your jeans pocket without you (or anyone else) even noticing it is there. And it connects to the hp2210 for data transfer and GPRS access if needed.

So it was a decent setup: with my PDA and phone with me when I go to work, and just the phone when I go out socially.

Then I decided to see whether it would be possible to converge the two devices. I elected not to go down the Series 60 route because it doesn't support local email sync, but decided to dip my toes in the MPx200 pool because Modaco seems to have a huge support network, and also because you can buy an MPx200 for under 40 quid on eBay, so it is a cheap way of testing the waters.

So far, I have to say that it has done admirably, but with a few provisos.

As a PDA, it has great multimedia functions. Email is fine using the keypad and T9, although perhaps not quite so quick. There is no AvantGo client so I live with MobiPocket news instead. Excel file editing and note-taking is possible with software downloads. Document viewers are available for all Office formats and PDFs, but I have yet to find a way of editing them on the phone. In all honesty, I never really did extensive editing on the hp2210 anyway, so it is a slight adjustment I can live with. My only complaint is that the processor is rather slow so it can seem as though the phone has frozen when you are switching between programs. this never happened on my PDA.

As a phone, it does what a phone should do, which is take calls, and send and receive texts. And it isn't all that much bigger than my Nokia.

Can I live without my PDA now? Well to be honest I can say "yes" although it has meant some alterations in work patterns. For instance I now carry a USB SD card reader with me everywhere so if I do need to edit documents I can plug the SD card into computer. Also the battery life leaves very much to be desired, barely surviving a day of usage on a single device where there were previously two.

If they can create a phone which is no larger than my MPx200, yet has QVGA resolution and a proper numerical keypad (not a touchscreen keypad) running Pocket PC phone edition and a decent battery life. I'd jump on it in an instant. I am sure that the technology to allow this will come about in the future eventually rendering the two separate platforms redundant.

Oops. First post and it has turned out to be an opus!

[Guest Seraphic]

I used to use my o2 XDA on a daily basis, it did everything I needed but didn't have bluetooth which really annoyed me. I couldn't afford an XDA2 so I decided to get an MPX200 as a 'stand-by' until I could afford one.... I think got a C500 and I used to XDA maybe once or twice since.

[Guest Y-Wing]

I think it boils down to how much data you have to enter on the move. I have an E200 and it is fantastic for checking upcoming meetings, inputting short tasks and reading short e-mails ( I sync with my work Outlook over GPRS using work-supported OneBridge client 8) ).

I don't really write huge e-mails on the move, if I did then would have to consider PPC phone.

[Guest]

Well, I used to use the SP3, before I got the Jam, and I've tried going back a few times now - I just love the size and feel of the SP3 - unfortunately, the Jam just does things so much better for what I need.

It is small enough to be pocketable, and pretty near perfect to use, though the main thing to improve it would be a qwerty keyboard.

When the Universal comes along, as long as it's not too big, I'll be tempted there too!

Edited June 10, 2005 by Guest

[Guest Chaser81]

Have had Pocket PCs in the past and they never gripped me for very long (was probably the fact that they werent wireless). When I got my Jam, I loved it to bits, it did EVERYTHING I wanted in a device and then some... Sadly, the novelty wears off everything after a while, and I went looking for something else.

All I need in a phone is an mp3 player, Html complient browser, email client, and a comprehensive contacts manager. I find that a smartphone is just easier for me to use than a Pocket PC for what I need it to do. Texting after all is sooooo much easier when you actually have keys to press!!

[Guest trignlo]

I have a hp2210 for two years and took it everywhere even when I had a Nokia 6600, tried the SPV M2000 had it for a day and sent it back because it didn't do line 2. replaced that with a motorola v635, hated that, gave it to me mum and nicked her SPV C500. Now hardly use the 2210 unless I have serious text entry or want to download some large file. Now have WM10 on the C500, can sync with desktop for music, got Papyrus which is a seriously good PIM, so hardly use the PPC, but give me the new Pocket PC with hidden keyboard, that isn't that much bigger than the C500 and I'll use that. Text entry just too slow on C500 for anything other than quick remarks. Apart from this best phone I have had!

TnF

[Guest Jamma14]

Been a smartphone owner for nearly two years and loving it - it does all I need and I wouldn't want to lug around a PPC.

Not looking forward to the merging of the platforms and higher res screens. It'll mean old apps won't work or only with borders which'll mean they won't really be much good to use and a lot of the OS features won't be used on a smartphone (touch screen etc) so it'll be looked down on and get even less development. If the two platforms do merge there will still be a need for pocket pc type devices for more heavy computer type stuff and smartphones for more phoney type stuff. I don't see the point and wouldn't want a phone that can run PPC apps but not control them and not run our old apps properly, just to make life easier for microsoft.

There are definitely diffeferent needs for each platform and that's why I think we should keep with the two separate platforms.

;)