I so happy that Breckenridge is getting snow. I haven’t goneboarding this season because the snow has been horrible. But they have been getting some much needed snow and should continue through Saturday.
Can you guess who has plans to go boarding on Sunday?
Make sure you check out the webcam on Sunday…I plan to try it out. You can text message me from the Contact Ryan page so I know to turn it on.
I recently replaced my Motorola Q with the new Samsung i760 from Verizon. I know I’ve only had the Q for a few months, but as much as I loved having a phone that was also a PDA, the lack of touch screen drove me nuts. I honestly kept trying to ‘tap’ the screen…an old Palm habit I guess. So with all the talk about iPhones, I thought I’d write a post about my phone should someone be interested in an alternative touchscreen smartphone.
Of course the phone that everyone wants is an iPhone. But because it currently doesn’t allow the addition of 3rd party software, it just didn’t fit for me. I like having my Quicken, my grocery list, my internet radio and TV and my RSS feeds with me. You just can’t do that with the iPhone.
I do admit that the iPhone has an amazing interface and I wanted to copy a lot of the features and the look. This is my main screen, I just tap the application I want with my finger and I’m on my way to playing Sudoku, surfing the web or listening to my music.
If you look closely, there are 5 smaller icons just above the iPhone icons. These switch between different application tabs that give me quick access to all my programs.
All of my programs are right there at my finger tips. And a lot of them copy the same finger scrolling action that the iPhone has. Just a flick of my finger and I’m scrolling through my text messages, contacts or music.
As you see from the photos above, I have alot of applications. Google Maps you can’t live without. With the addition of a Bluetooth GPS receiver, Google Maps will even give me step by step directions anywhere I need to go. Weather is a must, especially in CO where the weather changes within minutes. The weather software even includes the ski report so I can decide if I go to work tomorrow or take a powder day.
This next image is the phone application, which isn’t bad but I want something sexier. I tried a copy of the iPhone dialer but the Mute button was in a bad place and I kept hitting it with my cheek when I was on a call. I’ll have to keep looking for a phone replacement. Finally, the music player I have on this phone has a nice interface with large cover art in the display.
And of course, ryanize.com as seen on my phone. Yes, this image is flipped…that’s because the i760 has a slide out keyboard, just open it up and the screen image rotates for use in landscape mode.
One of the coolest applications I have on my phone lets me use it as a webcam. It will connect to my PC through WiFi or the Verizon network and let me stream anything my phone sees to my website. I can literally be on the ski slopes and broadcast it to my website. The little webcam image in the sidebar is actually the last thing my phone ‘saw’.
There are a few things I would change about the phone. The green ‘Answer’ button and the red ‘Hang Up’ button are both in a weird spot. Being along the side of the phone, I’ve had the misfortune of hanging up a call while I’m in mid-sentence. Funny, girls don’t like it when you just hang up on them. I also wish there was an internal GPS for the phone but I’m looking into a Bluetooth GPS receiver, so I’ll have that function at some point.
All in all I love this phone. I’m constantly trying out new software for it, which is part of the fun for me. You can’t do much tweaking to the iPhone, but my i760 can do so much, you could play with it for days and still have lots more to do.
If you are looking into getting a smartphone I highly recommend the Samsung i760…it’s an amazing phone that does things the iPhone hasn’t even thought about it.
