PDA phones have revolutionized the way that we wor,k and revolutionized the way that we waste money too. Below I have listed 4 common ways that you can waste money with a PDA phone. 

1. Getting one if you don’t need it. If you don’t need to check your email, and can barely keep up with your calendar on paper, don’t bother investing $100-400 on a phone plus about $100 per month on service. A phone isn’t gong to make you more organized, or more likely to return your email. 
2. Not buying an unlimited data plan. Once you are able to surf the web, check the weather in Madagascar, and get quotes from the Tokyo Exchange, you will start racking up the data charges, so do yourself a favor and get the unlimited data plan.
3. Not keeping track of text messages. It’s easy to text with a full keyboard, but if you don’t get the right plan you may end up paying upwards of  $0.20 per message.
4. Using it internationally without a plan. Make sure you call your carrier so you don’t get hit with obscene roaming charges 

What ways have you found that a PDA phone can suck money from your budget?

I stumbled upon a really cool tool that can supercharge any cell phone (or landline for that matter). It lets you use your phone to send emails and text message to individuals or groups; make notes and to-do lists; add entries to your Google Calendar (and many other apps)…but that’s not all…. you also can get news, weather and RSS feeds as well.  And the news gets even better, you won’t need to extend your cell phone contract or go into debt to get it,  because its a free voice recognition service that works with any phone called Jott.

To use it, you register at their website and do some basic setup. You can enter names and email addresses so you can email from your phone; you can setup notes and to-do lists so you can dictate to them from your phone; you can link to your Google calendar so you can add appointments, and you can setup news and weather feeds so you can listen to them.  While the setup sounds complicated, the site is actually very well designed and easy to use. In addition there is quite a bit of help with examples so its easy to learn how to use all of the features.   Once you’ve done some setup, all you do is call the 800 number that Jott  provides, tell it who you want to email/text or what note you want update, dictate your message, and in a few minutes, your note is saved or your email is sent. You can even call to have Jott read news, weather, or any custom RSS feed (like one from irunabiz.com) back to you.

According to their web site Jott is “free while its in beta” which means that it could either  become a pay service on the turn of a dime, or disappear for lack of a viable business model. But, I plan to use it for as long as I can  (and I’d even consider paying for it if the price was right).  If you need to have some basic messaging and note functionality on your phone and don’t want to cough up the big bucks for a smart phone–give Jott a try.

 

The Good. The web browser is great. You can finally look at most websites and see them in the format that they were intended (No Flash or Java though). The price of $200 for the 8GB phone (with a contract) actually is better than a lot of other smart phones on the market. It also has the mobile me service (costs extra) that allows you to keep the phone synced with your computer. It has built in email, calendar, contacts, a GPS, Music and Camera. It integrates nicely with outlook and google mail, and google provides optimized applications for the device. The calculator is nice because the touch screen buttons mimic an standard calculator, and you don’t have to figure out what keys do what. The touch screen is pretty intuitive for basic operations. All applications have to be approved by Apple before they can be offered  the Apple store, so they are less likely to work cause problems with the phone.

 

The Bad. Battery life, with what I would consider moderate usage, I got about 12 hrs out of the battery, my 8700 got about 36 hrs, and there is no way to change the battery on the IPhone. (Of course the 8700 didn’t have power draining features like 3G, GPS, Wi-Fi, and the screen was half the size.) It doesn’t have a built in task (to-do) application, and cannot sync tasks or notes with Outlook. You can’t categorize contacts, for instance business, personal, family, etc. Some of the useful options are buried in the settings, for instance the ability to use CAPS LOCK, is hidden in the general settings and is defaulted to off. The built in mapping application is rudimentary at best. There is also no way to add a memory expansion card. All Applications have to be approved by Apple so there are less apps available than for some other smart phones since the testing and approval process can be time consuming.

 

The Ugly. The phone is only available through AT&T so if they don’t cover your area, or you don’t wat to switch, you are not getting an IPhone. In order to activate your Iphone you have to provide a credit card for an ITunes store account, even if you are not going to buy anything.

 

(By the way, I can’t decide if I like the soft keyboard better than the keyboard on the Blackberry. It takes some getting used to, but it works ok.)

 

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