'Smart' phones & GPS

Hi Darren,

I have been investigating the same thing.

So far I have discovered the following:

- O2 phone etc only have 200Mhz cpu, which is slow by todays standards
- Co worker has O2 phone, and it continually crashes on him.
- Battery life on O2 is very poor
- O2 are capable of running GPS with bluetooth gps, but not stable enough to consider foolproof

I have decided to go with a dedicated PDA with higher cpu speed, and not get phone troubles as a result of trying to mix the 2 areas

Hope this helps

TonyG

I have had an iMate (=02 XDAII) and now an iMate Jasjar.

They are excellent at combining PDA and phone functions.

Unfortunately the operating system in most PDA's is written by Microsoft, so regularly resetting is a gurranteed feature - the phone, gps etc make no difference.

Mike

Hi,

I run the XDAIIs (previously XDAII). The downside is the need to reset of the phone on a weekly basis but that is more a factor of the operating system than combined phone / pda. It is very handy having the one device, cradle, and wiring.

I use a Bluetooth GPS to connect and run OziExplorer. I find Bluetooth can be a bit buggy but I think the benefits of one device is good.

I have not had a problem with speed as Tony mentioned and while battery life can be limited when running multiple devices most of the time in car it is connected to power anyway.

Good luck.

I've been looking at the similar items. The HP HW6965 is about 2 weeks away and looks well integrated. The Mio A701 also looks good but may be mid year before Australian launch. Both run the Windows Mobile 5 OS so could (should?) be more stable. HP are also coming out with the 6828 which is a re-worked Atom that is apparently much more stable. No inbuilt GPS though.

Being a Palm devotee from way back means a very big step backwards in PDA functionality (stability, speed and intutive interface for a mobile device rather than a miniturised desktop) and so I've put off the decision so far. Shame there's no equivalent Palm device.