XDA Orbit, Sony Ericsson P1i or Nokia N95

[dvdfjojo]

When asking for an upgrade from O2, I've asked which smartphones they can offer and they've come up with those three. Can anyone help on which one to choose.

1) The XDA Orbit comes with CoPilot free.
2) The P1i I'm wanting to choose but that's only because I love SE phones and loved the P900 I had a couple of years ago.
3) The N95 which seems to be the smartphone of the moment with all the bells and whistles.

I want the phone partly for business use. It needs to be able to synch with Outlook on my computer, that's a first requirement.

It's got to have a touchscreen or qwerty keyboard as I can't be doing with writing emails like I would do a text. That would drive me nuts.

I'd like it to have satnav but I suppose with the SE, I'd have to buy both a GPS receiver and satnav software and with the N95 I'd just have to buy the software. Anyone know how much roughly this would be as an extra. Is CoPilot the best or can TomTom be bought for these two?

The main thing I need it to do is for my laptop to be able to connect to the internet wherever I am - is this a simple thing to do and set up? I'm presuming you just plug the phone into the laptop and get the phone to dial some number to connect??? Sorry, I'm clueless, never done this before and wouldn't know where to start.

Any help and advice would be very much appreciated.

Cheers

 

[williemaykit]

My recommendation out of the three would be the XDA. It will sync with your outlook (and if you visit mail2web, you can even setup Exchange ActiveSync - push email - for free if you don't have your email address as [email protected]). Whilst it doesn't have a QWERTY keyboard, it is touchscreen and has an onscreen keyboard. Navigation is really easy through the integrated trackball making one handed use pretty easy. It has also had it's Windows Mobile 6 upgrade released for free which will make connecting to your laptop alot easier

If you want to connect to your laptop via bluetooth, you will need to set up Bluetooth Dial Up Networking. Your laptop will then use your mobile your phone's data (GPRS or 3G) connection. Windows Mobile 6 has made this pretty easy. Haven't experienced it with Symbian.

Another option is the Treo 750, though you will either have to buy it through Vodafone, from Amazon or through sellers on eBay. It has a full QWERTY keyboard, touchscreen, free TomTom GPS receiver and is being up upgraded to Windows Mobile 6 (the software has already been leaked onto the net)

 

[dvdfjojo]

That's brilliant - thank you for that.

Jo

 

[Kieron]

Another Orbit user here - love it.

 

[loz]

Well, I vote for the P1i. Seeing as I have one

Love the simplicity of connecting to the web, it automatically looks for wifi first, then 3g, then 2g WAP. You don't have to dial any number or anything. Think of it just like a broadband connection in your phone. When you use an application that needs access to the web, it just goes find the best connection (asking you to confirm in the case of mobile 3g 2g web, in case your tarrif requires you to pay for data)

Like the little qwerty kboard, it really is good. Much faster than taping away on a virtual touchscreen kboard or a normal 1-9 keyboard

Synch's perfectly with Outlook on my PC.
Supports push email, including blackberry.

Camera not a highly spec'ed as the n95, but better than the orbit.
Music player and FM radio nice (though supplied headphones a bit quite)

Not much it can't to really.

I see the N95 is now free on £30 tarrifs at O2, which can't be a bad deal. Which means it is now cheaper than the P1i. (it was the reverse when I bought my P1i last week)