It just turns out that I live on the wrong country! According to the Wall Street Journal, my Nokia 9500 Communicator is the hottest phone in Indonesia! It's such a hot phone that not even Blackberry has broken their grip there. They even sold gold-plated Communicators for $2,500 a pop and apparently a businessman in Jakarta paid $5,100 in a charity auction to be the first person to buy the new Nokia E90 Communicator when it's available later this year.
Sure, I know that everyone's hot for the Apple iPhone and I guess it will be pretty cool when it comes out. But, there would only be two reasons I'd think about getting one. 1) I'm hoping it would sync easily with my Mac laptop and 2) yea, it'll be the cool thing to have this summer. But, it really doesn't do things that are really that big of a deal for me right now. I mean, my 40 gig video iPod is sitting on a window ledge collecting dust right now. Sometimes I do miss having it with me, but, for the most part, it just sat in my briefcase for weeks on end without being used.
But my brick, as the 9500 is frequently called, I use all the time. And not just because it's my phone. I do lots of writing and live blogging and use my 9500 as my main keyboard a lot of the time. In fact, although I started this blog post on my computer, I've done the bulk of the writing on my train ride home. Sure is a whole lot easier to write on my 9500 then it is to take out my laptop.
And it does really well with e-mail too, at least it does for me. I understand that you can add Blackberry connect to this phone, but it suits me fine to have to ask for it first. And you should see the SMS messages I can send with this thing! Being able to connect through the phone or wi-fi has advantages, although I almost never use wi-fi any more. Maybe it would be faster, but it works fine for me.
And I've written articles on this puppy, like of the 1,000 word kind (this piece was almost 800 words)! Maybe not the final piece, but a huge hunk of it. I like being able to write wherever I am. Let's me get my thoughts down in a much more coherent fashion and then I can send them to my laptop to do the finishing up. Sometimes I start something here and don't remember about it for a while and when I find it, it gives me new thoughts. It's a real writers phone!
And it works great as a phone too. I love having the two keypads. You know, when they made the Treo and most of the other phones, they didn't really figure out how to dial a number like 800 GO FEDEX. The qwerty keyboard really doesn't handle that well! So, I have a real phone pad on the outside and a great keyboard on the inside. It's like putting together chocolate and peanut butter!
Sure, it has a few drawbacks, but the only really serious one is its speed, or lack thereof. It can be slow, I'll give you that. But it's even sometimes faster then my laptop! It actually had a slow processor when it came out, but now it's really slow relative to other things out there.
And yes, it is big. Sure, I've sometimes mistaken it for my remote control, but fortunately phones are actually getting a little bigger so now it's not as huge looking as it used to be. And while there are times (like if I'm going bike riding) that I would like something that's just a phone, most times it's really pretty easy to carry around. My only complaint really is that I haven't yet found a good case for it, so it's starting to get a little beat up around the edges.
But I usually get the standard size remarks that every 9500 owner gets. At first people say "Holy smokes that big" and then when I open it they say "Holy smokes, that's really cool!" People love the size of the keyboard and especially the screen. It's a great screen for reading e-mail and surfing the web.
I'm seeing more & more positive reaction to the 9500. Business folks don't mind the phone being a little larger if it gives them better functionality. While I was in LA last week, people really seemed to spark to this phone. Makes me wish it was available here again.
So, I'm sure that the iPhone will do fine. Although I'd still wait for iPhone 2.0. There's always something wrong with version 1.0! But I also think you'll see more phones like the 9500 and E90 in the future too. It's nice having a phone that almost replaces my laptop.
I like to call this my honkin' big phone and my wife is always reminding me to tell people it's my very small laptop. Whatever we call it, it's the best phone I've ever owned. Maybe I'll get the E90 when it comes out! And check out the posting from Seth Godin and Laura Ries below to see their iPhone predictions. Lots riding on this phone for Apple!
Link: Ringing Up Sales in Indonesia - WSJ.com (subscription required).
Link: The Origin of Brands Blog: iPhone predictions.
Link: Seth's Blog: iPhone Challenge: Marketing pundits unite.
You can get free access to those WSJ.com articles through http://www.congoo.com - that was just in PC World
Posted by: robert | May 22, 2007 at 10:56 PM