Since the cool iPhone list of people has long been extinguished and the list of other people that really utilize their mobile phone has also seemed to run its course, it looks like I am next thanks to Josh.
If you would have asked me this question a month ago I would have had only one thing to say: I just it like a phone. However, just two weeks ago we switched from Sprint to T-Mobile (because of the My Fave Five plan) and upgraded phones. I’ve never really thought of my cell phone as anything more than a phone until now. I think that the acquisition of a cool phone changes your perception.
We got a really good deal on a couple of Blackberry Pearls. I’ve been playing with the thing for the past two weeks and I’m now to the point of not going anywhere without it. This is a stark contrast to the past several years of simply viewing my cell phone as a necessary evil.
A lot of the following is probably basic stuff for the rest of the world, but since I’m a laggard technology-wise it is all new and cool to me. So what applications do I use with my phone?
The camera. I’ve been snapping a lot of pictures that I wouldn’t have bothered taking in the past. My previous phone did have a camera, but it wasn’t near as nice as the Pearl’s and there really wasn’t a good way to transfer them other than by picture email, which sucked. Hooking my camera to my PC via USB makes it much simpler to transfer files.
The web browser. Again, my previous phone did allow for web access, but I didn’t have a data plan so I used it sparingly, usually just to check football scores if we were stuck with a Sunday soccer game. The Pearl’s is much better and I was able to add web access to my plan pretty cheaply. Current sites that I have bookmarked include my fantasy football web site on CBS Sportsline, m.twitter.com and m.jaiku.com. I really like being able to check twitter when I’m sitting around with nothing else to do - like waiting for Regan’s soccer practice to start.
I’m not doing email with my Blackberry - I really don’t want to get hooked into that - but being able to sync my contacts, calendar, and tasks with Outlook is something that I haven’t been able to do in the past and I love it.
MP3 player - the Pearl is also a built-in MP3 player. I haven’t had a chance to make use of it yet, but I will.
Video - the Pearl will also play video. I need to get a Micro SD card (2GB for $24.99 at Microcenter) to be able to store videos, but once I have the room I’ll make sure to put a movie or two on it and maybe a couple of Barney shows (Tucker just started watching Barney and has really taken to it/him). I’m also going to have to find a way to transcode existing formats, like DivX, to a smaller size. I haven’t looked to see what resolution the Pearl supports, but I’m sure its nowhere as big as what my current files support. I’ll want to squeeze them down to a smaller size since I’ll have limited storage space.
BrickBreaker - a BreakOut clone. I’ve only played it a couple of times so far, but it’s an awesome game and I look forward to sinking more time into it. The trackball that the Pearl uses for navigation makes playing the game easy and fun.
That’s it. Sorry nothing groundbreaking. And since I’m starting to see a bunch of repeats and I’m personally growing tired of this meme I’ll serve as an endpoint and not tag anyone else. However, if you’ve not been tagged yet and you’d really like to share then post a comment and I’ll tag you.
UPDATE - I tag: