To all my phony friends

[pasithea]

I'd been thinking about replacing my crap phone with a less crap phone for a bit. This weekend I accidentally slammed it in a car door, wrecking the display so now I have little choice but to do so.

So.. I'd not mind some recommendations for a new phone as I've made every attempt to know nothing about the wretched things. Still, I like the idea of a combined PDA so here's a set of features and limitations I'd would like/have. If you know of anything that fits, I'd appreciate the input.

Limitations:

• Network we're using is Sprint.

Desires:

• I like the general UI design of the iPhone; touchscreen, no buttons.
• Data space for music would be nice.
• Being able to write on it as though it were a notepad like an Apple Newton would be nice.
• Ability to use as modem for Macbook (nice but not necessary)
  
• GPS (nice but not necessary)
• Access to mindless flash games (probably a negative but I kind of want it)
• Web access (nice but I probably won't use because I'm a skinflint at heart)
• Play video (nice but not necessary)
• Photos and an easy/cheap way to get them off the phone.
• gCal or iCal access (preferred) or some other method of setting multiple alarms and a datebook
• Personal wiki, note system, or a toolkit for building apps for the phone.
• Developer's kit (nice but not necessary)
• IM and/or IRC access (nice but not necessary
• Some kind of drawing app (wishful thinking)
• Voice recorder (local to phone, not stored remotely)
• Reasonably friendly file management system (more wishful thinking)
• Access to phone's data from Mac. (Yet more wishful thinking)
• Bluetooth pairing with a chorded keyboard and/or ability to plug in external keyboard and display(now I'm just being silly)

Oh, and if it could cost less than a zillion dollars, that'd be nice too. :P

Also, if there are any other features I haven't thought of that are nice to haves, suggest them. It's probably past time for me to stop shunning a technology that I haven't worked with much since they were a large black box called a Car-Fone which had a regular telephone handset attached to it. ^_^

Comments

[postrodent.livejournal.com]

I may be evangelizing here, but I think it might be worthwhile to consider a Palm Treo -- one of the models running Palm OS, of course, _not_ WinMob. Out of the box it's merely okay, but there's a significant supply of (often free) software that can massively expand its functionality. My 650 has a (serviceable) drawing application, an MP3 player, a text editor, an ebook reader that reads open formats, an SSH client and a movie player, all of which were free. I got it from ebay about a year ago, $80. It's pretty rugged -- I've dropped it a few times, no damage -- and gets good battery life. I often go three days without a charge.
The only major downside of these machines -- and it is a significant one -- is that, afaik, none of the PalmOS Treos have built-in wifi. You can sometimes use an SDIO wifi card to get around this, sometimes not. :p Regrettably Palm seemed disinclined to let Treo users have wifi until fairly recently.

[kyhwana.livejournal.com]

Nokia N900?
It's Linux + X11 (GTK/qt).. but, in your pocket.