My New Scoblephone
Well, I broke down and went with the new Microsoft standard, or at least the DPE standard: the Cingular 2125. Everyone around here seems to have one, and these are all people who bought them with their own money.
Robert Scoble picked one up in December, and I’ve been reading his rave comments about it for a while now. Then my manager got one, and his first business trip with it was to Wuhan, China, where it worked just fine. Then a co-worker got one, then another … and now me.
The hype is true: this phone rocks. Great reception, bright readable screen, speedy web browsing (compared to other handheld devices I’ve used), Windows Mobile 5.0, and lots of nice usability features. I’ve got it set up to synch over the air every 10 minutes, so now I can handle critical emails any time of the day, wherever I am. And it’s the smallest phone I’ve ever carried, so I’m not paying anything in terms of physical inconvenience for all the capabilities it gives me.
Sure, the triple-tap typing is a bit slow, but that’s not what this is about. This device is about portability and convenience, and the Cingular 2125 has those attributes in spades.
If you’re a Microsoft employee, there’s a good discount on these. Go to the Cingular store in Bellevue Square, and tell Josh the silly bald guy sent you.
This entry was posted on Sunday, March 19th, 2006 at 1:50 pm. You can subscribe to comments on this post through its RSS feed.
on March 19, 2006 at 3:53 pm Scobleizer - Microsoft Geek Blogger » The power of “I paid for this” wrote:
[…] Doug Mahugh demonstrates the power of “I paid for this” rather than “cool thing I got for free.” Yes, I actually did spend my own money on my Cingular 2125. He bought my phone after several other people around him also bought it and says “the hype is true: this phone rocks.” […]
on March 19, 2006 at 6:14 pm Megan wrote:
Looks like you could use a manicure….
on March 19, 2006 at 10:03 pm Jason wrote:
Sure, the triple-tap typing is a bit slow, but that’s not what this is about.
I’m pretty sure you should be able to turn on the auto-text thingie that most phones have now. Just type normally and it gets most things right on the first try
on March 19, 2006 at 11:12 pm Doug wrote:
OK, Jason, I’m going to try it. I must admit I’ve never really given that a chance — I’ve always been a keyboard control freak. But if it reduces the time it takes to type a 2-sentence email, I’m all for it.
on March 20, 2006 at 12:45 am kim wrote:
The secret to using the predictive text thing is to NOT look at the screen while typing words. Trying to type “meeting” and having it predict ‘o’, ‘of’, ‘office’, is disconcerting, but hit the fourth key and POP, ‘meeting’ comes up. It’s magic!
on March 20, 2006 at 5:46 am DigDoug wrote:
I really like the phone, I had every intention of trading it in for an 8125 for the first few weeks I had it, then it just started clicking. However, I’d love to see a few folks talk about HOW they use it.
The lack of a quick note taking thing (think text message to yourself) with integrated predictive text has me darn near ready to write my first Windows Mobile app. The lack of an easy way to get to ‘key lock’ is my only real complaint.
on March 20, 2006 at 7:26 am mcepat wrote:
keylock could not be easier
hold down the red key to lock
then press unlock on the the left action button and press *
done
on March 25, 2006 at 9:25 pm Doug wrote:
OK, I’ve been trying the predictive text approach. I’ll blog about it after I’ve given it a fair try. And I’ll probably be hooked by then, I think. It’s cool, thanks Jason/Kim for pushing me to give it a try.
Visual Foxpro’s Calvin Hsia blogged about his Cingular 2125 two days before the post above, I just learned. He had some fun observations, including the location of the XML that controls the layout of the phone’s home page.
Just about everyone who has one loves this phone, it seems.
on March 25, 2006 at 10:05 pm Doug’s World » Saturday Night at Home wrote:
[…] Last week, I was working on OpenXmlDeveloper.org, the final push before going live Tuesday morning. Before the sun went down, I stepped outside and shot a picture of my new cell phone behind Building 16. […]