Cell Phone/Laptop/GPS/EMAIL/?

[Bill at BOATS 4 SAIL]

I'm overdue for getting a new cell phone.
Is there anything available now, that will serve several functions, or something else coming out that I should wait for?

[Sloop John B]

Yeah, they take pictures and get you on line. All I know how to do is call home and say I'll be a little late.

I called Cingular and told them I was going to switch to Altell because they were cheaper and had much wider coverage.

The gal dropped my rate $10, gave me state side coverage, and sent me a new Razr phone.

Companies are very competitive to get you within their 'market share'. Take advantage of it.

[James V]

Bill - If you want to spend the $$$$$. Look into the new Sat phones. There is a tri phone that has cell and sat. You can also set up to use internet. The Set up cost is not cheep. With the car mount kit, about $ 2700.

[Catigale]

Verizon can set you up with a phone that will let you talk on the CDMA network as well as use their 'fairly fast' wireless network with the computer..its about 3-4x faster than a 56k modem in my experience

You should check what the coverage is like in your area though, of course...these things are not all equal..

[Rich Smith]

I recently got a UT-STarcom 6700 PocketPC/Phone. I bought a 2 Gig card and a Bluetooth GPS with it and Pocket Navigator so I can use it as a chartplotter, as a phone, and as an MP3 player. I also have about 50 elctronic books stored on it so I can sit down and read a book while at the mall with my wife ;->

Oh ya, I can also use it to give me directions while driving in my car.

All in all, I'm very happy with it!

Cheers

[hiram6]

A Blackberry 7520 from Sprint Nextel meets most of your wants. Cellphone, walkie-talkie (Nextel network), real-time e-mail, built in GPS with turn-by-turn driving directions for whn you're in the car.

No laptop modem functionality, but don't know how critical that one is for you.

[DLT]

I just got a Samsung SPH-920 (otherwise known as an A-920) through Sprint. It has web access, which is an additional cost on your phone bill, so you can access email right on the phone...

You are supposed to be able to use it as a modem for your laptop, although I haven't figured it out yet. I did get my previous Samsung working as a modem, but just haven't spend much time working on this one yet...

It has GPS support and you can download GPS mapping software that is supposed to let it work like a regular GPS unit. I haven't tried that either, since I have separate GPS units...

Some of the features I really like are the built-in camera phone (which is pretty typical nowadays) and the fact that it takes transflash memory cards (which is less typical). These two features combine to give you a real usable camera. I put in a 1gb card, and can snap a picture of anything at anytime... Yeah, watch out...

Also, it has Bluetooth capability, so you can go real hightech and use lots of wireless accessories... I actually have it setup to communicate through BT to the GPS unit in my car, which then acts like a speaker phone setup while I'm driving.

[ssichler]

The Treo should meet all of your needs except the GPS portion. I like mine as it does about everything except mow the lawn but fortunately I don't have a lawn -
http://www.palm.com/us/products/smartph ... index.html

[LOUIS B HOLUB]

Sloop is right...
its a competitive market. I use Cingular also, and members of my family likewise. We can call Cingular phones..."FREE".
Offerings of various services are wide-range to suit one's needs...

[Duane Dunn, Allegro]

I find my Blackberry 7100 is great out on the water. It's smaller than all the other blackberries, yet still has the full feature set. You don't feel like you have a brick on your belt, just a normal size phone. I have T-mobile service, but you can get the 7100 series from almost any carrier.

In addition to phone functions it has a unlimited data connection to the GPRS packet data network. From the built in web browser you can get any internet content. I have bookmarks for tide and current sites, weather sites, even chart viewing sites. These all work great on it's color screen. You can even browse and post to this board from it.

It of course has full email capability. I have it consolidate my work email and my two personal email accounts all into the one handy device.

It also serves as a modem for my laptop. The connection is around 56k through the GPRS network, not blazing fast, but certainly sufficient when out on the water.

I know it has a limited internal GPS capability, but I have not come across any applications that make use of this at this time. There are apps for the Blackberry out that make use of an external wireles bluetooth GPS. The Blackberry locks onto the positioning signal and puts the location on the map shown on the Blackberry. Now I just need to figure out how to get nautical charts into the blackberry like I do with my Windows pocket PC. All the Blackberry apps are written in Java, sounds like a project for my 15 year old son who just finished his AP Computer Science Java programing class.

Additional info on edit:
The Blackberry 7520 and 7100i models have built in GPS receivers. All the others with Bluetooth can use an external bluetooth receiver. Here is an interesting app for the Blackberry

http://www.skylab-mobilesystems.com/en/ ... ducts.html

In looking at their map server list I see a NOAA ENC server in the list. Looks like I might have all the parts to give this a try and see if I can get full GPS positioning on a NOAA nautical chart using my Blackberry. I'll report in after I download it and give it a try.

One great thing about the Blackberries is there are hundreds of add on applications you can download that add additional functionality. Here is a great resource for handheld applications, HandanGo.