Right, bored of it now.

[Guest fixit]

Hello early adopters - by which I mean people that took delivery of their SPV from the time they were first available (nov-02, christmas, jan, maybe feb....)

Who's bored now? Here's the progression as I saw it. Chronical order vague, but roughly in the order I installed stuff.

1) Took delivery. Colour screen, MSN messenger, Internet access. Mates immediately grabbed phone and started downloading p*rn, were v impressed. Discovered limitations of rubbish bundled camera.

2) Found Modaco. Decerted. Felt vaguely smug at blow dealt against Orange, the dirty corporate so and so's.

3) Doom. Legend. Wistful comparisons to days when I though that was cutting edge on my PC. But was pretty much unplayable, not the developers fault but it blatantly was. Rediscovered solitaire.

4) Task manager. Yay. Now I can close unwanted processes destabilising phone after running Doom and the other available decert apps.

5) I can play gameboy games. Genius. But slow and after a few days novelty of grappling with keypad wears off. Pick up old gameboy for a day or so to remember how great 'motocross maniacs' was. Starts retro mental trend, start eyeing up my 48K speccy. Never got round to connecting it up. Install PC emulator instead.

4) Rediscover solitaire yet again. So does my girlf. Finally recover phone from her. We both want freecell.

5) NES emulator. Could only have one ROM until later version and could only copy around when connected to PC, as wasn't paying a tenner for file manager app that I felt should have been there in the first place. Friends in pub getting bored of me showing off phone now. Take hint, put the damn thing away and get my round in.

6) Found Jacoch's free file manager. Installed. Could move gameboy games around, but need soon negated by new version of emulator that could handle multiple ROMS.

7) Tanager announced. Realised I should have waited until I realised it was a badge engineered identical phone.

8) XP/longhorn skins. Look good. Adds another level of processing that slows down phone so go back to Orange original.

9) Finally get round to downloading wavs and using as ringtones. Low quality wavs p*ss my office off for a while. Give up owing to peer pressure.

So where now? I'm thoroughly bored of the phone. I paid 100 notes and I reckon it's given me that much entertainment, so no regrets. Is Smartphone going to take off? What will it do for me next?

[Guest nickcornaglia]

WOW! NICE!

I don't know if I'm where you're at yet.

But well said, nonetheless.

[Guest awarner [MVP]]

And after that you are now bored :?

what are you expecting to happen with the phone next?

I'm not bored with it yet I just wish I couldget past a certain point in Zelda :)

[Guest Mr_Protozoa]

Next thing to do:

Make a phone call!

(NB software bugs may not allow this)

[Guest Rob.P]

You can say the same for PC's. I get bored of them every now and again, but something will happen that will draw you back to it, just like you got drawn back to your Gameboy and the speccy games. Sounds like a short attention span, I'm the same, get bored quickly and I hate being bored.

The phone has updates and more software in the pipeline, neither Orange nor MS have explored all the possibilities of this phone so who knows what it'll do in the future (hopeing for tea making facilities attachment :) )

[Guest mattat]

You could always start watching movies - hours of fun to be had tinkering with encoding settings and staring intently at a small screen... :roll:

[Guest spacemonkey]

Also, make note of the fact that you are bored with the phone, but is that going to be different with a different phone?

The important question, is that aside from it being a phone (cos we all need a mobile phone in the modern world), do you think it's been more interesting in general than any other options you could have purchased. When you buy another phone, will the lack of some of these features that now bore you be a significant loss in your life?

I would say for me, that I am not as excited by the phone as I used to be but I still use it for games (mainly gameboy) to kill time on the tube, I use it for a little MSN and web browsing when I specifically want to contact someone or look something up, I use it as a camera (occasionally although when it has an internal camera it will be MUCH better), I use it as a diary (older phones could do this but not very well), and shock horror, I sometimes even use it as a phone.

[Guest Monolithix [MVP]]

"Connectivety" is a fairly important/crucial part of my life, and i think for the price i paid it provides pretty much all i need (SSH, please!) to get my by until i have access to a PC with "proper" inet connection.

To be honest i don't use it for films, emu's, game's etc. I wanted mobile e-mail, calendar, and mp3 player. MSN and HTML browsing were very useful bonuses, that's all.

Over all i feel very satisfied with my 100 quid, it does exactly what i need, when i need.

NB: Bear in mind that the time i found the phone i was in the market for a new handset and looking at PDA's, desperately trying to justify the cost for the few features i wanted. The SPV turned out to be a perfect compromise.

[Guest ClintEastman]

Pocket Outlook runs my life for me..... And that's worth £100 to me.

Oh and South Park on tap where ever and when ever!! :)

[Guest Honest John]

I got the SPV because I wanted to have my Office Diary available without carrying my Jornada around and also wanted to back up my phone numbers in case I lost my phone. I was not interested in GPRS or e-mail. and the camera/MMS is still a gimmick.

TIP!! The RAC always advised keeping a throwaway camera in the glove compartment in case of an accident. Replace camera every year. I keep the Camera attachment in the car for the same purpose. Just a thought for those of you who don't use MMS and never carry the camera attachment and don't know where to put it.

Nokia phones have Outlook compatible software - as did a Siemens phone, but the SPV was just that bit more compatible.

As a phone, it falls behind its competition because of its poor battery life. Compare it with the Nokia range (Especially 6310) or my old Sony J70 and there is no doubt who wins. As a PDA, it is short on applications. But as a combination, I would welcome any advice as to what is better.

Then, of course, there we come to you guys who have developed so much, with all the applications and skins, not to mention decert and registry tweaks. I am deeply in awe of the prominent names on the Forum for their talents and wonder just where this will eventually lead to.

All I can say is that if someone gets bored with the SPV in 6 months, then how long would it take with an ordinary Panasonic or Nokia?

[Guest jacoch]

I was also primary interested by IE and outlook. But I can't understand M$ is not supporting multiple email accounts.

[Guest vijay555]

fixit mate, what more can you really expect? think what you were doing with your phone last year? Making calls, playing snake: pretty much it i wager.

I'm not a fan boy and recognise issues with the phone, but i think that as a _phone_ we have access to a significant amount of toy technology in our pocket. I personally used to carry an ipaq around with me, but then i realised that to get a telephone number off it required so much effort for one quick number, i was better off carrying a piece of paper around. And then in central london, you don't really want to be (a) pulling out a shiny piece of kit, and (:) dropping a shiny piece of kit.

The phone can stay in my pocket. I can quickly pull off numbers. i've got my calendar. It works for me.

But then: i wrote a memo on the train the other day using the fabric keyboard. after you get over the dork factor, the usability of being able to pull out a phone, listen to mp3s and type out memos while killing 2 hrs on the train is great. Then, roll it up and stick it in your backpocket.

What else you do with the phone is up to you. I think most of the software out there really has to be considered a technology showcase. I don't think the processor is really what it needs to be, but the novelty of loading up bomberman on the snes emulator was cute. i wouldn't play it, but still, the technology exists. "Early adopters" like technology for technology's sake, but if the phone didn't work as a phone, it wouldn't be worth diddly.

I think it's a nice phone. Objectively it's easily the best phone i've used, just for the handsfree, predicitive dialing and Outlook sync of contacts.

But what else to keep you busy? games - whatever tickles your fancy. I've got a 2.6ghz pc with an ati 9700, and i still rarely play games. My attention span is too short (although Medal of honour kicks ass!). What can i expect of my phone? I think it's up to you, in the context of the device.

What do you propose that the phone would have to be able to do to stop you being bored, apart from being able to unbuckle your trousers and get busy? that's what gfs are for!

I digress: tinker with the phone. Get it running nice. Stick a simpsons or two on the SD for when you're stuck in traffic. Play a bit of solitaire. Learn C++ and write/port freecell. Make the occassional phonecall.

I'm sure i'll be bored of the phone in 6 months (i only got mine last week), but many marriages last less time! I'm realistic.

But in 6 months, we'll all be gushing over whatever else turns us tech fans on. C'est la vie...

V

[Guest Thurstan]

I went to Chester races yesterday on the train from Manchester. After listening to the Avril Lavigne album on SPV (great album btw!), I thought "I'll watch a bit of Gladiator", so I did. Got a text from a mate, then signed in to MSN messenger to chat with her for a bit.

After that checked what time my train was due to arrive using the net, checked Hotmail, deleted lots of spam and porn. Read a bit of sports news.

Then SPV checked my pop account automatically, read a few interesting emails, replied, added a few appointments to my schedule.

Played on Tennis for a bit. Got bored, played on Tetris and a couple of other games. Eyes got tired, train got busy, so had a kip listening to a few more random MP3s.

Mate rang me to say he was already at the track, walked to racecourse, lost lots of money, went to pub, had curry, went home. SPV boring?

[Guest Thurstan]

Oh forgot to add - took a couple of snaps from the track and a little (v jerky of course) video to show my gf when I got home.

[Guest midnight]

and you havent even played with the registry yet? how can you say you have used this phone without doing that hehehe. and errr, i've had my phone since jan/feb and i'm finding new things to do with it all the time (but then i do like to mess with the phones registry), oh, and dont forget, with a reg tweak (or my upcoming custom profiles tweak), you can have a wav file on the sd card, which allows for better quality because filesize does not become a problem.

by the way, have you made your own ringtones? or attempted your own homescreen? or something similar? half of the fun with this forum is creating something and then letting everyone else see what you have done. It gives you great sense of acheivement.

oh, and if you havent put the southfart sound scheme on your phone yet, you havent lived

[Guest fixit]

Hey, looks like I've kicked off a good bit of debate!

I'm not dissatisfied with the phone at all, don't get me wrong, it's definitely the best toy I've found in a while. I'm a self confessed early adopter and any gadget is of interest to me. Hell, sometimes I even read the innovations catalogue... erm, that's not really technology is it. Good fun tho.

You're all right - I need to learn C++ to get any more personal benefits out of this phone.

Good bit of kit - and rather dangerously I'm already thinking about what I'll get when Chrimbo comes around and my upgrade comes up. Hopefully there will be a higher powered Smartphone that'll run that SNES emulator. With keys you can actually use. And Java, if Microsoft would allow it. And maybe a built in projector allowing you to project episodes of the Simpsons across an immense IMAX style screen + an audio system capable of full surround sound rather than just small tinny wavs. Think that might kill battery life tho.

And with all that extra horsepower I will probably just keep on playing Solitaire...

[Guest Matt Kirby]

To paraphrase:

"He who is tired of SPV is tired of life"

One thing I have yet to get bored of is going up to a mate, putting the SPV in thier hands and watching thier face as I press play on the Matrix trailer...

No other phone comes close to doing that!

[Guest ClintEastman]

To paraphrase:

"He who is tired of SPV is tired of life"

One thing I have yet to get bored of is going up to a mate, putting the SPV in thier hands and watching thier face as I press play on the Matrix trailer...

No other phone comes close to doing that!

I am glad i can be of service!! :)

Try it with Animatix and see the responce you get!!! (follow my sig Neo)..

[Guest Playdoh]

One of the things I love is that you can continually update and add stuff to this phone. I know you can do that with some others like Symbian phones and the P800 but look at all the stuff on Pocket PC - I reckon we'll see more of those apps coming over to Smartphone. At least I hope so :)

[Guest spacecowboy6982]

i cant see this bad boy getting any better till the SPhone 2003 comes along - with video confrencing, built in camera, dead fast processors - cant wait !!

SpaceCowboy

[Guest vijay555]

"cant see this bad boy getting any better"

Surely the quality of software is going to improve? if you look at some of the early code compared to what's coming out now, better understanding of the platform is obviously resulting in better software. Look at ClearView/Repligo, notbad, fabric keyboard, ialbum etc.

Time will give us better utilisation of the platform, although of course the software has to be tied to limitations of the hardware. So yes, the newer phones will have better processors etc, but it will be more of an evolution than a revolution i reckon (having played with the Intel ref design etc at the Modaco Meet)

I think this forum and homebrew is getting more phones on the market, and this results in better commercial development, which results in more phones etc. forums like this will help keep what is obviously a fledgling device alive, and then when the hardware and software are able to really take our breath away, then Smartphone generally will be kick-ass.

But for now: i don't expect voice recognition or 3d graphics. But as an always available game platform, still/video camera, simple word processor, contact book, email client, calendar and browser, and given that the phone is available for free (!) then i think I got a pretty good deal with the phone.

.. at least compared to the Sagem, which was the only other free upgrade :)

V

ps someone please send me the activesync registry settings! I need help...

[Guest ClintEastman]

But for now: i don't expect voice recognition

http://smartphone.modaco.com/viewtopic.php?t=60837

:) :(

[Guest vijay555]

Yeah yeah, i know, fonix :)

Sigh. It's like when we got voice recognition on the PPC. So much overhead, not worth the effort.

Now text to speech, that'd be grand. I notice there's not many peeps looking at that.

Imagine: Order of the Phoenix being read to me in NaturalVoices...

V

[Guest phoenix]

hmm the camera is a bit shaky in preview but the actual pictures are of very high quality

[Guest Matt Kirby]

Try it with Animatix and see the responce you get!!! (follow my sig Neo)..

WOW!

Another gem! Can't wait to show it off to my mates...