Well, we finally broke down and got it.
On Saturday, Berta, Abby and I wandered over to the Verizon store and ordered our new cell phones. They are both Kyocera 7135 smartphones. I have written some things about the 7135 before, but this one should provide all new information for anyone who's following along or in the future when I get amnesia and have to reset my phone.
Basically, they only had one phone in the store, and the other needed to be ordered. Because my line is the primary phone, I got a phone to play with. I see this as good in a practical way because I will have a couple of days to work out the kinks and tell Berta what she won't be able to keep from her old Visor.
Anyway, the phone is very cool. It's smaller in area than the Visor Prism, and only 1-2mm thicker than the Visor with the plastic cover on. (I kept the hard plastic cover from my old Visor Deluxe for use on the Prism.) The 7135 seems lighter than my Nextel i90c, although I haven't done an official side-by-side comparison. It could be that the weight of the 7135 is spread out over more area than my Nextel phone.
One of the things that I read about on review sites for the Kyocera phone is the quality of the hinge and how it rivals that of luxury cars. I have to say that it's pretty darn nice. It has a nice solid feel. The case seems pretty sturdy all around, too.
The Palm part of the phone works pretty much just like the Visor Prism did, which suits me just fine. There is an extra "OK" button in the middle of the up/down scrolling buttons, but this can only be used by applications that were designed for the extra button. The 7135 reports the OS as Palm OS version 4.1. I don't see any extra extensions in the files list, and since I see Palm logos everywhere (unlike the Handspring's customized Palm OS) I'm assuming it's relatively unmangled.
The unit has 16MB of internal memory, which fits everything that I had in my 8MB Prism, plus all of the apps that bled over onto the MemoryStick I was using with the MemPlug Handspring module. On the side of the phone is a slot for an SD/MMC card. I had the darndest time getting the 128MB card in there, and then I realized that it was upside-down. Rather, the top of the memory card needs to face the back of the phone. Inserting the card that way made it really easy to insert, and I noticed a nice spring-action eject when I pushed the card in further after it was already seated. The unit beeped when the card popped in and recognized it right away.
The smartphone comes with a lot of software pre-installed. Installed in the phone are applications that provide access to all of the phone features, including Call History, SMS Messages, Speed Dial, and Voice Dial. There is a picture viewer and several web browsers already installed. One of the web browsers is for the standard WAP-style web menus (those web menus that the Verizon sales guys like to tout but look like crap to anyone who has ever sat at Internet Explorer). The EIS web browser is probably the best one installed.
A bunch of software comes on the setup CD, too. The Palm Desktop application is on there. I have not run it, since I never use it, but it did make me uninstall the old Handspring one. There is a copy of QuickOffice 6 on the disk, but I used my copy of QuickOffice Premier (7).
Using a hotsync, I installed all of my old applications to the phone, basically using the old username on the new phone. There is a warning about this on a pamphlet that comes with the manual. You have to delete a file (Saved_Preferences.prc) from the backup directory before you sync. I did this, but my phone still broke after the first sync, so I had to cold reset.
In case you can't find it, the cold reset button is inside the battery compartment. With the frequency I've had to reset, it's very annoying to have put the reset button here. Hopefully, everything is now set so I don't have to do that anymore.
Bascially something was happening that made the phone application behave badly. The phone menu only showed two options, and you couldn't switch to the second option. So all you could really do with the phone was look at your current phone number. That makes dialling difficult. I ended up reinstalling each application by hand, which seems to now have worked fairly well.
I installed a full compliment of software - LauncherX, QuickOffice, ShadowPlan, HandStory, PowerOne Graph Calculator, Bachmann Utilities, Agundus, and TealMovie. I also sync'ed in Insaniquarium, Billiards 4, and Rook's Revenge. TealMaster is installed for hacks with MagicText, McPhling, SilenceHack, TealEcho, TealGlance, and TealScript. Everything runs as advertised, although I had to change a few of the hack triggers because you can't drag the stylus from, for example, the applications silk button to the screen area because of the phone's hinge. I'm considering what messaging application to use. The toss up is between Eudora (included with the phone), SnapperMail, and Iambic Mail.
My original intention immediately after hotsyncing was to load up the SD card with MP3s to play through the phone's built-in MP3 player. The phone comes with a special application that lets you transfer MP3s to the SD card while the phone sits in the cradle. You have to activate the transfer application in the phone and run the desktop application to initiate the transfer. Unfortunately, the transfer is really really slow. My advice, get a USB card reader (like I did) and transfer at the normal 10MB/second rate. (As a side note, the Kodak card reader I bought doesn't appear to work properly under XP. It reports a hardware error. After an hour of troubleshooting drivers, I noticed that it was working fine in spite of the errors. Duh.)
So I got all of the MP3s in there, and then I got out my headphones and looked for the headphone jack. Ok. Where's the headphone jack?
Tucked on the side near the stylus slot is the plug for a 2.5mm stereo headset. That means that it's a smaller jack than for my headphones, and it has a microphone port on it, too. Unfortunately, there's no brand name hardware available that will expose this port (and my MP3s) to a cassette adapter for use in the car. The only thing out there is Kyocera's own headset, which doesn't allow anything else to plug into it. So I need one of Cool Cat's adapters. Don't even bother looking in Radio Shack for parts for this - I was there today and they don't seem to carry them.
"Does the phone work?" you ask? Of course. Actually, Verizon's coverage so far is better than Nextel's. But Verizon's signal quality pales in comparison. I've never heard signal artifacting as bad as Verizon's when I was using Nextel. But I do get a signal when I'm at work, so that's a slight improvement. The weekend will tell if we keep the phones based on how well they perform in the mountains of Johnstown.
There are a few wierd phone quirks. First, I have to open the phone to voice dial. This is a trivial thing, but my Nextel phone let me hold in an outside button and use speakerphone to voice dial, which was really useful in the car. The 7135 instructions say to just push the Phone Dial button and wait for instructions, which works just fine. The training system in the phone is operated though Palm software, and the female trainer voice is very domineering.
What exactly do the volume nubs on the side of the phone control? Ring volume? Is that all? I haven't quite gotten down the adjusting of volume for all of the audio. Some things appear to play through the sound/MP3/phone audio processor, and some through a system beep. My silence hack only apparently controls the system beep, so all sorts of sounds now play whenever they like. A hack that lets you quickly toggle the system volume would be nice.
However, the outside buttons do allow you to turn the vibrate ringer on and off much more easily than the i90c. You just hold down the Down Volume button until it vibrates to turn off the ringer, or the Up Volume button until the ringer comes back on.
One thing that takes a bit of getting used to is the fact that you can't use the stylus/screen to tap options for the phone. You must use the up/down hard buttons and the custom OK button. This isn't too much of a pain, but the box that pops up with you try to touch the screen and select an option is very annoying.
Agendus (a nice Address Book replacement) works well with the phone, but only one-way. That is, you can dial out from Agendus perfectly, but when you're in the phone interface and tell it you want to see your address book, it takes you to the default application. Unfortunately, I don't see any way to set the application to use.
Text messages can be sent to my phone over the web via the vtext website. It pops right up in a standard Palm window. I like the messaging application because it's pretty simple, but I might try out Iambic Mail, just to see what SMS features it might offer. Of course, I probably won't be able to program the phone to use Iambic Mail for the same reason I can't use Agendus as my Address Book.
There are a couple of other items to mention that don't really fit well anywhere:
The phone can be hooked to a computer (like a notebook) for use like an external fax/modem. This is a very cool feature.
In order to use the phone without the Express Network (which costs a lot more, like +$99/month), you have to change the network options in the phone. Go to the Palm Prefs application (not the phone prefs) and pick the Network category. Set the service to "VZW Quick 2 Net (14.4kbps)". You should see the network then.
Incidentally, the whole behavior of the network is odd. You have to connect as if you're using the phone, then you can use web applications. Most web applications have a "connect" option. I guess this isn't a truly strange thing, but I've been on DSL and instant-on so long that I think it feels weird to have to tie up the phone with the web. Be suer to disconnect when you're done, as this uses airtime, or do it on the weekends when you're not paying for it.
The sync cradle for the Kyocera 7135 is the coolest thing. It's very sturdy, looks like some alien device, and is very functional. With the phone in the cradle, you can open the clamshell and use the device for Palm or phone features, or you can just leave the lid closed and let the device charge. The travel charger that comes with the phone plugs into the cradle, so if you're going on a trip, you'll have to disconnect the plug from the cradle to take it with you. The cradle itself, as I mentioned, is not only sturdy but actually a bit heavy. It can charge a spare battery in a slot behind the phone cradle.
So far, I really like the phone. When I finally get the adapter to play MP3s in the car, I'll be much happier. Hopefully, Berta's phone arrives soon and when we get to Johnstown we have a great trial run, because I'd like to keep this one.
