I waited 4 weeks before I write my opinion so this isn't an euphoric 1st impression.

I'm lost, I bought an unlocked iPhone from Italy!

I owned a N810 for ~10 months and after jailbreaking iPhone, I only miss the 5MP cam (N82) and Carman (old gtk version) from my two devices, my N82 phone and my N810.

I need _one_ (not a phone and another internet tablet) pocketable Unix box with ssh client/server, a shell, python scripting, music player and I don't want to program a useful GUI and user interaction, I need a useful GUI and user interaction by default. I'm not that heavy GUI programer, I'm a Unix admin which can wrote some useful personal shell scripts and I need ssh to administrate my servers.

And I need a PIM, web browser und music player which is _really_ capable to be used with my fingers. No stylus anymore, no taping when I want to scroll, but is registrated as a single click. GPS is fast too and with OfflineMaps, I can use Google maps like Nokia maps. I don't need much more from a navigation app.

I loved to have Linux as a pocketable Unix device, but Linux isn't ready for everything _I_ personaly need (for example Exchange client because I need the device for my company too and I don't take two devices with me, never ever).

Thank you guys, this was really a very impressive and informative time where I learned very much about this pocketable devices.

did you have a look into the E90 ?
it has :
putty
python
zsh and telnetd : http://developer.symbian.com/wiki/display/pub/P.I.P.S.
mail for exchange

PS :
For the E90 I also noticed Ayix "a pure Python-based emulated Unix-like OS for Series 60 mobile phones" :
http://www.symbian-freak.com/forum/v...ic.php?t=16980
http://discussion.forum.nokia.com/fo...d.php?t=127044

Yes and no. You must know that I owned a 6630, E61 and N82 since the last years. Now I wrote I'm very excited because of the iPhones GUI. I think it's useless to recommend me a S60 device ;-)

I dreamed from a phone like E61 keyboard, N82 camera, Unix based like N810 and the GUI like Canola.

I got not every hardware specs (I only miss the 5MP camera) with my iPhone and I got a _much_ better user interaction.
All at all, the iPhone is personally the best compromise. If I'm excited 4 whole weeks like day one, this is _my_ device.

Yes, python is much better integrated in S60, but I need some simple personal console scripts only.
Yes, E61 does have a very good hardware keyboard, but the iPhone touchscreen keyboard is the best I ever used (from my work, I know nearly all HTC, Nokia and Compaq iPaq devices)

Last week I played some minutes with the HTC Diamond from a colleague. Sorry, this device feels like a joke compared to my iPhone.

This is my personal opinion only. But I can recommend everyone to play some days with iPhone and then go back to your ususal device.

Oh I thought you were looking for a new device ...
So you are happy with your iphone ?
Is its OS open enough ? so that you can run scripts and some kind of sshd/telnetd server on it ?

Similar factors drove me to the T-Mobile G1.

1) It has an ssh and a local shell app (though, honestly, I don't need a local shell, ssh'ing out to a real shell is better). And unlike Putty for Symbian, it does port forwarding and doesn't require any file reformatting to utilize your OpenSSH key files. Like you, I'm a unix sysadmin. But, I don't need to be a sysadmin for my phone, I just need it to let me connect out to my servers if I need to manipulate them in a pinch.

2) It has a rich, finger-friendly, GUI

3) It has a decent application ecosystem

4) It has a music player included, and video players available

5) It has a decent Gmail and Google Reader experience (and there are other RSS readers available if Google Reader isn't your preference; I haven't looked at the other email options though).


The downsides:

A) you mentioned wanting python for scripting -- nope. But I don't really need that on my phone. It does have a free/open SDK though, and it's Java based (for good or bad).

B) no tethering

C) short battery life (I bought an external battery backup for it, we'll see how much that helps). Helps if you keep wifi and 3G turned off, and only activate them when you really need them (and then turn them back off when you're done). since I live in a 3G area, and work in a 2G area, I find I mostly only use the Wifi and 2G data anyway.

D) For me, there's still not an adequate VNC viewer. There is one, but it doesn't support VNC password auth yet. Which is a bit annoying. But that's an application annoyance, not a device annoyance.

E) I hate trackballs, and it has a trackball instead of a d-pad. Hopefully a future android device will go the opposite direction :-)


There's a few other little quirks... but I don't miss my N810. (and, in comparison to the N810, I don't really find myself missing the larger screen; plus, the keyboard of the G1 has a MUCH nicer feel; and it's a 5 row keyboard)

I gotta admit, I did also consider buying an unlocked iPhone from Italy (where they're all sold unlocked), but I only considered it for a few days.

Don't you ever want to do basic stuff like copying-and-pasting a URL from somewhere into a blog post? Surely the lack of copy-and-paste in the iPhone's browser is a big minus? It was a show-stopper for me.

Roger.

I think most of that has been solved already through another app (if not an unlocked one). An unlocked iphone is the only thing I see a competitor to the internet tablets (other then Android once it gets to full steam).

@ Johnkzin : I guess you never used your N810 for VOIP because if you had, you certainly would miss that by switching to the Google G1. Also, you state that the G1 has a smaller screen that you don't seem to mind. The G1 screen is smaller but what is more significant is the G1 screen is much lower in resolution, G1= 480X320, your N810 had a far superior 800X480. The G1 video player is horrible, and so is streaming YouTube on the G1 (compared to the N8xx). Then there is the price....G1 at $179 in the U.S. plus you have to lock into 2 years of both voice and data plans with T-Mo. If you don't want the two year commit, supposedly there is a $399 G1 but I have yet to see one that is really for purchase. T-Mobile is supposed to offer a $399 with no contract but they just aren't doing so (yet?). Even if you could get the $399 unit, I do not believe G-Talk (Google's own VOIP client) will allow voice on the G1 (only Chat), there is no Skype and no Gizmo5 and no SIP on the G1 (even at $399), so no thanks.

@ OP: Don't get me started on the negative facts regarding the iPhone. The biggest problem with it (IMO) is the locked down / fenced in aspect of it. No thanks. Freedom may come with a price. With the N8xx the price to have my freedom isn't in Dollars or Euros, it is in other aspects but I gladly pay that price because the N8xx has nothing locked down... nothing crippled.

If you don't use mobile VOIP / SIP then I can see where giving up the N8xx is easier for you. If you need a PIM and you refuse to carry more than one gadget then I see why the N8xx isn't the machine for you. I don't mind carrying two devices (my N800 and my old, thin Samsung A-900 Blade), I personally don't really need a PIM, so I can't think of anything better right now (for me) then the two aforementioned devices I take everywhere.

I see that the N8xxs are not for everyone. The iPhone and the G1 are definitely not for me. I like my freedom.

I used it. I had a skype account with all of the bells and whistles (unlimited in with my own phone number, unlimited out in the US+CA, etc.). And it wasn't really that useful to me. The quality was ... questionable at best (I hate the VOIP distortions caused by packet switching over circuit switching, maybe when 4G networks are here they'll be fast enough to get over that). Further, I already had an unlimited talk house line, and an unlimited talk cell phone (and when I switched to t-mobile, I went on their unlimited talk service, as well).

There were other limitations that might have been skype specific (I seem to recall there being some difficulty in seamlessly moving my presence between desktop, NIT, workstation, etc., there were cases where history between locations wasn't kept in sync for things that should have been globally available, like whether or not I had a voicemail waiting for me, or just the fact that I couldn't truly use Skype as a cell phone replacement due to the lack of 2 way SMS messaging).

It turns out that there's only one person I ever skype with, it only really happens at times of day when I could be at my desktop, and it's skype-to-skype. So paying for the things that MIGHT have made it a full phone service turned out to not be valuable, and yet without it being a viable full phone service, it's not something worth bothering with.

And don't mention video chat. I have no desire for it.

In short, VOIP didn't offer me anything I needed, and its quality and limitations came up short compared to other mechanisms. My skype services lapsed Nov 1st, and I see no reason to renew them. I haven't even done skype-to-skype with that on person in months.

Skype just doesn't suit my use needs. Due to both personal and professional needs, I need a persistent presence at a single phone number, with unlimited use, reasonable call clarity, and the ability to use that same number for both voice and messaging. Skype doesn't fit that bill, but my cell phone does.

Aside from the video support, is Gizmo really that much better in this regard?

The difference hasn't been a bother. In fact, what I found was that for what I want/need to do, either 480x320 is "quite usable" (light web browsing, light email, light RSS), or 480x320 and 800x480 on a 3-5" screen were both inadequate. For those tasks, I have to step up to a bigger screen.

So, for basic tasks, the G1 is quite usable, and the NIT offers no advantage.

For more involved tasks, the G1 and the NIT are both too small.

Oh, and, while we're talking about the usability of the devices themselves, the G1's keyboard is MUCH better than the N810's. The stiff low-feedback keys of the N810 were a consistent annoyance, where the G1's keyboard has great feedback and a just about perfect degree of stiffness.

Neither of which I ever did on the NIT, nor have I even tried on the G1. I'm not looking for a PMP.

Everything has a price. I evaluated pay-as-you-go rates, pre-paid rates, and contract rates (and even looked at them on both AT&T and T-Mobile). I looked at what was available at each level of service, and what I would have been using.

If I sign up for the 2 year contract, I get a discount on the device and full (voice+messaging+data) service.

If I do pre-paid (flexpay), I pay the same amount per month, get the full service, but don't get the discount on the device.

If I do pay-as-you-go, then I don't get the discount, nor do I get full service. (which rules out this option, as I don't want to pay per message, nor am I going to do without data service, nor pay per MB)

The price, as you say, is that I have a contract. But, guess what? The price of breaking my contract is the same as the benefit of my discount. I basically can switch to the benefits of 'flexpay' or 'pay-as-you-go' at any time by giving back my discount. That doesn't seem like a huge problem to me.

It's not perfect, but I have yet to find a phone that was truly carrier agnostic in the US, not even just between the GSM/UMTS carriers. No phone will do 3G and both AT&T and T-Mobile-USA. Nor do either of the GSM/UMTS carriers offer a decent pay-as-you-go service that has the things I would want (unlimited M2M, unlimited N&W, unlimited messages, unlimited data, each paid for per-day). So, no matter what I did, there wasn't going to be an ideal solution.

The G1's "cost", on T-Mobile contract service, gave me the features I wanted, without too much pain. And if I picked the other paths, I was going to have to give up something that I wanted, or pay for a discount I wasn't getting (because you pay the same rate on flexpay that you do for the contract service, you just don't get the device discount).

The N800/N810 (I owned both) continued to stagnate on the features I wanted, however. And it wasn't until after I had purchased my G1 that there was even an announcement about some movement to fix those shortcomings (PIM and HSPA basically) ... and the solution is over a year away. So, in a year, I'll re-evaluate. If the G1 and/or android's shortcomings aren't fixed by then, and the N900 fills in the gaps, then there's nothing to stop me from switching gears again. What I gained by signing the contract will be exactly what I lose by breaking the contract (pro-rated down, these days), so it's a fairly even trade, IMO.

Aside from "refuse", I would say that's close to summing it up.

If you don't care much about VOIP, if you don't consider your internet device to be a PMP (or don't care about PMP functionality one way or the other), if you want all of your PIM information to be sync'ed into each of your devices (whether it's one or many), and you only want to have to touch/hold* 1 mobile device without having to fumble around with multiple ones, then the current NIT platform is going to frustrate you, and the G1 will probably keep you happy.

If you further don't need a physical keyboard, access to things like a full screen SSH client, etc., then the iPhone will probably keep you happy.

* It's not an issue of "it all has to be in one device", it's how many devices do I have to actually touch in order to get things done. I'd be happy with a gateway device that I could shove in my gadget bag, had a long lasting battery, had a wifi access point built in for access to 2G/3G data, could provide SIP service to the NIT for access to GSM or CDMA voice, could provide jabber service to the NIT for access to SMS/MMS, and was either modular for carrier access or came in multiple carrier/protocol versions. So, "two devices" isn't the issue. It's "how many devices do I have to actually handle while I'm out and about". With such a gateway device, I'd only ever have to touch my NIT to do anything while I was out and about, and it would maintain the separation between NIT and carrier that some people go on and on about.

The Cradlepoint devices almost satisfy this, except for the voice and SMS/MMS roles. But with the current situation, I still had to pull out my E61i to initiate tethering, or look up certain information that was sync'ed to my desktop address book and calendar (which my NIT couldn't do), or put down my NIT and answer the phone, etc. which was sometimes cumbersome and/or annoying.

Further, I am already going to be sticking with a 2 device plan (would have been 3 devices if I had stayed with E61i/NIT instead of G1). Remember what I said above about "sometimes 800x480 wasn't adequate"? I bought myself a Samsung Q1 Ultra Premium (and installed Ubuntu-UMPC on it), and work bought me a Raon Everun Digital Note (with Ubuntu on it). These wont be my "check email while sitting at the train stop" devices, but will fill in the gap between "a 3-5 inch screen is too small" situations and "I'm not near a desktop" situations. Both fit in my gadget bag (though, I only plan to carry one or the other, not both the samsung and the everun), and are much smaller than a laptop (and my gadget bag is, purposefully, too small for a 12" laptop). Both satisfy specific needs that weren't/aren't filled by either the NIT nor the G1. And the G1 is a win here because I'm still only carrying 2 devices instead of 3 (and that's only in situations where I'd be with my gadget bag; if I'm just out for an evening and only carrying my cell phone, I still have all of the capabilities I would have used my N810 for). The only thing I've given up is the E61i's tethering to support the samsung/everun ... which may be solved soon by the WMWifiRouter folks, who are working on porting their app to the G1.

(continued shortly)