Jacob's Insidious Ramblings

Well, the default battery that this phone comes with is a 1300mAh one. For light usage it may last through the day but for someone like me it does not. One of the things I got for Christmas was a 2150mAh battery. So far it has lasted way longer even through my normal usage. I am sure I will find out within a week as my usage fluctuates a bit each day. The battery is bigger so it came with a bigger case back. It adds weight to the phone and makes it thicker but I happen to like the feel of it better than before. If those changes are all to get used to for more battery power I would say it is worth it.

Since I got the phone I was interested in getting the Calendar, Contacts, and maybe even a way to sync music files. The first was easy as I researched that months ago. The contacts sync method took a little longer and I just found a way to get it to sync with iTunes, which is a weird thing but nice. I have an iPod so all my music happens to be set up in iTunes. Most of it is self ripped music from my CD collection but a few are purchased via iTunes. Below are the applications I used to get things synced. The first two require use of your Google account.

All apps I talk about on this post are Windows only but I am sure there are alternatives for Mac and/or Linux.

Calendar Synchronization
http://www.google.com/support/calendar/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=98563
It syncs your Outlook calendar with the Google Calendar or vice versa. You do NOT have to connect your phone to your workstation for this sync.

Contact Synchronization
http://www.webgear.co.nz/Products/GOContactSync.aspx
It does the same thing as the calendar one but with Outlook Contacts and Google Contacts. I have noticed on this one that if there is no email address or phone number it will not sync those contacts and will throw an error. Not graceful I know but the error does not jump in your face so it’s workable. You do NOT have to connect your phone to your workstation for this sync.

Music Synchronization
http://ita.sourceforge.net/index.html
This uses disk mode and I guess some iTunes API voodoo to access the iTunes playlist lists. You create a playlist and put songs into it and tell the program to take whatever is in that list and sync it with your phone when you connect it.

I know it would be nice if there was a single method to do at least the calendar and contact syncing but I have yet to find one.

I got the phone this past Wednesday and so far I am enjoying it a lot. First off, the phone works great as a phone. I get better quality calls on the new one than I did on my old phone, which worked well. The Internet is very fast everywhere I have used it so far. I really enjoy the email application and it works pretty good also. I am still trying all sorts of things with it. The only thing that could be considered a negative to me is the battery life. It is not surprising of the battery issue but I may get a bigger battery one day soon for it. The lack of a physical keyboard could be considered a negative for some but I am thankfully having really good luck with it. I do not miss the physical keyboard.