(keitai-l) vodafone 903T is dying -- new phone recommendations?

From: Greg Conquest <greg_at_gregconquest.com>
Date: 06/15/08
Message-ID: <485453C5.4000802@gregconquest.com>
(2nd try - 1st message didn't pass through...)

My two-year old vodafone 903T is dying a schizophrenic death apparently 
due to moisture from Thursday's rainstorm. It works, but it keeps losing 
the network even though there is plenty of signal available, so I'm 
going to have to get a new phone.

So, please, let me ask a somewhat basic, if uninformed question. Are 
there any outstanding phones that will allow:
1) bilingual menu (Japanese only might be OK if the menu layout is rally 
intuitive)
2) GPS and bluetooth and WiFi, in an uncrippled form. I mean, I want to 
be able to walk around my house tracking myself on google maps via my 
WiFi router and not pay any charges.
3) a reasonable price on data with a browser that let's me use gmail, etc.

I like "smartphones", but I abhor the extent to which they are locked 
down. I would rather carry a dumb phone, a bluetooth GPS puck, and a 
bluetooth PalmPilot (sic) than merge with the borg, er, Japanese cell 
phone family......

Emobile's S11HT looks nice except for the video acceleration problem:
(Check www.htcclassaction.org if you don't know what I'm referring to.)
and eMobile's network being downgraded from what it was... Does the 
S11HT not suffer from the same video problem as the other HTC TyTN II's?

My usage pattern:
I want to take photos freely tagged with GPS coordinates.
I want to browse gmail and a few other sites once or so per day.
I want to send an average of 5 or so e-mails per day.
And of course to talk, only for 30 minutes or so a month, and not lose 
the connection repeatedly.

Can someone give me a bit of guidance?

Thanks,
Greg

PS I don't know if I can hold out for an iPhone till July 11th.
Received on Sun Jun 15 02:26:26 2008