Since I’m planning on getting the new iPhone 3GS, whenever O2 Ireland sort out their stock issues, I’ve been looking around at the different cases available.
The first thing I learned is the best place to find out about iPhone case is from a guy called Carlos who runs the itsmemorphious YouTube channel (http://www.youtube.com/itsmemorphious). I’ve been looking through his videos trying to see what case would best suit my needs. What’s great about Carlos’s videos is that he actually uses the cases, he tests them out and really knows what’s what when he does his reviews but it’s his latest video on the Rebel Scholar that has really caught my attention.
The case he got to review just looks so good and it also fits well and would seem to give great protection to the handset. Now of course I went straight to the Rebel Scholar website (http://www.rebelscholar.com) only to find that the case Carlos reviewed was one of the high end $100 cases and to make things worse there were others there that looked better! I especially liked the Silver and Blue
OK so the high end cases are well outside my budget for a case but when you look down the product line, the mid range cases are $34.99 and the lower range cases are $19.99. The lower range cases are plain colours but I’m sure are still made using the same quality material as the high end one and so would be a good buy at that price. I think I’ll go that bit extra and go for one of the mid range cases, looking like it’ll be the Poison Petals case.
For anyone interested in getting a case for their iPhone or iPod Touch you should definitely check out Carlos on his channel http://www.youtube.com/itsmemorphious and consider the Rebel Scholar as a possibility.
To start with I’m not what’s being called a Mac “Fanboy”. Any device I’ve decided to purchase, the decision has been based on the actual device and not on who manufactures it or the hype surrounding it and that’s why I’ve avoided the previous 2 iPhones. The new iPhone 3Gs sees some improvements to the hardware to bring it in to line withother popular smart phones on the market but combining it with the new iPhone OS 3.0 upgrade puts it right up there as one of the better phones on the market and now deserves my attention.
The 3Gs was announced by Philip Schiller during the keynote address at this year’s Apple WWDC on June 8th. It becomes available in the US, UK and 6 other countries on Friday June 19th and in Ireland plus 5 more countries a week later on Friday June 26th.
The big things in the hardware end are an increase in speed (that’s what the S stands for) and the addition of a better camera which is now 3mp and is capable of video capture. The 3.0 software upgrade adds things like copy and paste, SMS forwarding and MMS all things that any basic smart phone can do already.
With the changes made, it brings me to my point, the 3Gs is really the first proper iPhone. It’s the one that should have been launched 2 years ago and there’s no reason it couldn’t have been as there’s nothing added to it now that wasn’t available then. I do think this iPhone will be the one to bring in customers (including me) that were not sure before. I’ll be watching the launch in the US and UK on Friday very closely to see how things go before I make my final decision whether or not to get one next week but currently I think I’m going to be making the change.
There’s still no set date for the release of the Pre but things are still moving along. Palm really need to make an announcement within the next few weeks before Apple pick up speed with the expected new iPhone.
Noah from PhoneDog got a nice update at last week’s CTIA ‘09 show in Las Vegas
Plus there was an interesting report on Bloomberg about how the Pre is turning Palm and Sprint around.
I’ve been looking around lately for a new phone but just can’t seem to find anything that fits in with what I want. At the moment I have the O2 Xda Orbit II which at the beginning I saw as a great upgrade from the original Obit but it’s just starting to annoy me now. I’m getting sick of touch screen keyboards, my thumbs are not made for those and the number of txt messages I send has decreased because of it (not a bad thing). Then there’s just small issues like no headphone jack, I have to remember to take the adapter with me whenever I’m travelling but more often than not it gets left behind. The other problem is the screen itself because there’s some sort of shiny reflective coating on the screen it means it’s next to impossible to use out doors and you have to constantly wipe it.
Now for the good points, the screen size is great for watching movies whenever I do remeber to bring the headphone adapter. The micro SD card goes into a slot on the side where as before you had to take the battery out and finally it runs pretty quick on windows mobile 6 making media players and sat sav programs real easy to use.
Now as I said at the start I want to change to a new phone but just can’t find anything that will tempt me away and no I don’t want an iPhone. Now don’t get me wrong I like the Macs and the iPods but I just can’t bring myself to like the iPhone. I see it has a huge waste by a company that had a chance to make something great. Just a quick point if you’re going to bring out a product that’s suppose to be the best and most state of the art of it’s kind then you’d want that product to do all and have all the basic features that your competitors have and do, most people should know what I’m talking about here.
Anyway the things I want in my new phone would be:
Some sort of QWERTY keyboard
3G
GPS
Some form of large internal memory and if not, a memory card slot
Headphone socket on the phone, no need for external adapters
WiFi
Windows Mobile, so that I can install my own programs
Now looking at those points you’d think that souldn’t be to hard to find but as of yet I’ve come up short. I’ve looked around and the cloest I could find was the HTC Touch range. The Touch pro looks perfect until you look at the two models up from it and I’m left thinking if only the Touch HD had the keyboard from the pro and I’d be running out to buy one.
Another one I found was the MWg Zinc II again looks really good but I think I’d still have trouble with it’s keyboard.
I was about to give up until I saw a piece in yesterday’s Irish Times In Gear magazine about gadgets for 2009 and they mentioned the new Palm pre coming out later this year. Now this looks like a real interesting phone apart from the fact it will use the palm OS it could be well worth looking at and is being tipped as the iPhone killer. There’s a few videos of it on YouTube but this one gives a good quick overview
So I’m left with the choice, if anyone wants to leave a comment swaying me one way or another or even better if any of the companies want to send me a phone to test that would be great.
