Looking for a simple phone - with a smartphone twist.

A

Ar A

New member
Hi all.

I need a simple phone - excellent call quality / reception, easy to use, long battery life, no multi-megapixel cameras, superduper media capabilities, etc. Form factor - slider preferred.

However, I do need one smartphone feature - and that's OTA contact/calendar syncing from an Exchange server. I'd like that to be a built-in feature - i.e. not a tack-on like Dataviz's offerings.

Apart from that if it looks nice, great. I'm not too price sensitive.

Could you guys throw up some suggestions?
 
Only thing I can think to suggest would be one of Nokia's offerings. A simple phone with a rather advanced feature that most people even with smartphones don't need or use is going to be difficult. Maybe a Blackberry Pearl?
 
Hmmmm... I never considered the Pearl.

It does look like what I need - especially in the numeric or flip version. The weird thing is, in all the time I had a Blackberry I don't think I ever really made a phone call with it. Anyone care to chime in as to what the reception is like with the Pearl 3G numeric? And also, how is the keypad locked? Once again, I always had my Blackberries in the semi-hard case so I never even considered accidental dialling.

The others I was considered were indeed with Nokia: The C5, E66 and E52. I even looked at Vertu but their Fortress service is curiously lacking in any sort of connectivity.
 
BB's are known to have fantastic reception. They lock with either a screen icon, or button on the top of the phone (in the candybar style; I'd imagine that the flip wouldn't need a lock).
 
I think blackberries maybe ur phone
It's not as overwhelming as an android or iPhone
Still has the smartphone twist with the form factor

I loved the keyboard on my bb 9000
Better reception than the iPhone 3G and 3GS
 
I hated the 9000, which was my last BB. Reception wasn't all that great as far as data went IMO, certainly better than the iPhone, which has always been crap - I dunno why the uproar now, they've always sucked for reception - but it wouldn't for example fetch emails where the N95 was happily still talking on (marginal) 3G. The overheating and the fact that the battery kept falling out when I fished it out of the case was the icing on the cake.

As I might have alluded, the keyboard is completely immaterial because I will never type messages on it. All I need out of Exchange sync is contact and calendar syncing.
 
Blackberries sync to a Blackberry Enterprise server, *not* an Exchange server, and only if you get the more expensive corporate data plan. You can get some functionality from a third-party add-on like AstraSync, but it is not seamless like with WinMo, iPhone, or Android.
 
Thank you captain obvious

I would actually say that bb syncing is arguably the most seamless in terms of Exchange messaging from a handset viewpoint. However as i said, dont need messaging and the full capabilities of bb are kinda overkill for what I need - although running a bes server will not be a problem. Decided to go with a nokia and see how it works out.
 
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