[UFO Chicago] mobile phone advice sought

[Christopher D. Heer]

On Wed, February 8, 2012 2:04 am, Larry Garfield wrote:
> On 02/07/2012 10:49 AM, Brian Sobolak wrote:

>> I'm surprised more haven't made mention of Motorola. I saw they had a
>> system where the phone was basically the "brains" of a laptop.  That
>> strikes me as much more practical than a tablet -- use your phone when
>> you
>> want, and when you need a laptop, jam it in and all of your "stuff" is
>> right there.  Might need to wait for the 2nd generation on that as it
>> seems that v1 had some bugs.

> You refer to the Motorola Atrix line, with its optional lapdock.  I
> agree it's an interesting approach.  It's also on its 2nd generation
> already, I think.  I have not used one so cannot speak to its quality.
> It looks like it's on AT&T, though. :-(

Yes, it's an AT&T exclusive in the US.  You could, of course, pony up for
an unlocked device, but then the only other carrier you could use it with
would be T-Mobile, and you wouldn't get 3G data speeds (let alone 4G).

I've used one, and IMO it's mostly a gimmick.  Yeah, you can use it "like
a laptop" in the sense that you have a screen and keyboard, but I found it
slow and tweaky.  Very few apps are designed to take advantage of the form
factor, so...again, more of a gimmick.

I've got the same phone Larry has (the Vibrant).  I'm pretty happy with
the Samsung devices, overall (my son has a Vibrant and my daughter has a
Galaxy S 4G), although my wife has an HTC (myTouch 4G) and she's pretty
happy with that.  For pretty much any phone other than a Nexus, you should
make sure it comes with the OS version you want, as updates are never
guaranteed.

I also second the comments about Swype.  It's not as good as a physical
keyboard (I miss my G1), but it's better than the typical soft keyboard by
a mile.
-- 
  Christopher D. Heer -- cheer at heerfamily.net