So I've just cracked the LCD on my F505i, and it turns out to be a
pretty major disaster. Not only do they want 9000 yen to repair it,
but it would take about two weeks. Of course, if I'm willing to change
my number I can get a brand new 505iS for half that price, but since
I've had this phone for less than 10 months, Docomo wants to charge me
fifteen to thirty-five thousand yen for any sort of replacement.
So here are some of my options.
1. Replace the phone with the same model or somthing similar. Not a very
happy option, since I'd pay 15,000 to 30,000 yen to do this. Also, I
don't like this model much any more, anyway.
2. Buy a 900i now. I won't pay much more than if I bought it as a new
subscriber off the street, so I don't need to feel so bad on that score.
However, they're still too big and heavy, and I wanted to wait for the
next generation. Especially since I have need for VoIP, and the 900iL might
fill it.
BTW, anybody got any comments on the N900i? It seems to have pretty much
the worst specs of any of the 900 series phones, but it's the smallest
and lightest. How about the F900i? Have they fixed the incredibly slow
rendering that the F505i had? That eventually started driving me nuts,
to the point where I'm extremely wary of buying another Fujitsu.
3. Buy something off of someone here. Anybody got a 505 or better they
want to sell? Or possibly a 504, if it's really cheap, and I'll sit tight
until the 900iL, or at least the next series of 900s come out.
4. Switch. I looked at the Vodafone V301SH today, and it's a darn nice
little phone. It's got QVGA and Java, and having only a 310,000 pixel
camera doesn't bother me. My favourite feature is that it's small: only
93 grammes, and smaller in the hand than any other phone I've seen with
this level of features. And it's only 1 yen for a new signup. The only
bad point is that there's no memory card. But there are of course a few
issues:
a) How do I get my phone numbers across? I can produce a vcard file
with most of my phone book, and Vodaphone claims that this phone
can receive vcard entries via IRDA. Is this a practical way to do
the transfer? Has anybody tried it? I don't even have IRDA on my
laptop or anything, though I think I've got some sort of adapter
kicking around. It didn't work on my NetBSD box, but perhaps there's
software to help do this from Windows?
b) E-mail costs. It doesn't use Vodaphone live; is it really true
that every e-mail I send or recieve will cost 4 yen? Ouch!
c) Getting pics off it. Not that I do that all that much, but is
e-mail the only option? It takes 640x480 pictures, can these even be
sent by e-mail?
d) Backup: how can I get the data off my phone so I don't get
completely stuck if it breaks? Or am I going back to the world of
manually maintaining two sets of phone books.
e) Quitting: if I decide a couple of months down the road that I
just have to go back to docomo, are the penalties very bad?
f) Anybody got any suggestions for a good plan?
g) And finally the most critical one: does it play the 3D
Densha-de-GO appli? :-)
Anybody got any other thoughts on what I should do?
cjs
--
Curt Sampson <cjs_at_cynic.net> +81 90 7737 2974 http://www.NetBSD.org
Don't you know, in this new Dark Age, we're all light. --XTC
Received on Tue Jun 15 10:58:08 2004