[There's a reason that Yoda is the unofficial mascot of SBS. Size indeed matters not.] Buying a phone these days is hard work. - THE OFFICIAL BLOG OF THE SBS DIVA
Sun, Jun 27 2010 22:47 bradley

Buying a phone these days is hard work.

Buying a phone these days is hard work.  We went to the AT&T store and was looking for a nice easy phone for my Dad.  We were even looking to possibly do it as a family plan.  In the store, we were told that if we did a family plan we'd not end up saving a lot of money.  But then later using the AT&T web site we realized that the plans we were quoted was above the minute plans we used. 

We ended up ordering a phone online to add it to our plans.

At my office I have the folks well trained enough that they ask me now what phones will sync with the office.  But lemme tell you, it's not easy these days trying to figure out what phones do and don't.  iPhone yes.  Some of the LG's yes.  Some no.  Androids yes... at least I think so.... Windows mobile, of course. 

So while it was a good thing to see the phones in person and know which ones we wanted to get for Dad, we ended up finding out more about the data plans and family bundling online.  Phone shopping is still way too complicated for something that should be lots easier.

 

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# re: Buying a phone these days is hard work.

Monday, June 28, 2010 8:01 AM by Mike

Just so you know, Android phones work great with Exchange. Very simple to set up and just works.

# re: Buying a phone these days is hard work.

Monday, June 28, 2010 1:08 PM by Harvey J

The Palm Pre supports ActiveSync natively and was easy to set up.  Does require a 3rd party SSL cert however.

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Tuesday, June 29, 2010 8:36 PM by Dean

"Buying a phone these days is hard work. "

You said it sister.

The marketing depts make it so that trying to find a phone with the features you want within the price you are willing to pay with an operating system that works the way you want it to is almost impossible. Unless you are willing to spend an unlimited amount of money there are far to many variables involved.

In addition they have to make it so that you can buy any phone and use it with any company ( the carrier technology being equal, although I don't see why in 2010 each phone can't have both CDMA and GSM built in with the choice in the menu system to chose which to use ) and stop this "exclusive" nonsense that has a certain phone being sold only through a certain carrier. In the old ATT days you could buy any phone, plug it into the jack and it worked. That was after legislation was passed allowing that to happen of course.

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Wednesday, June 30, 2010 12:58 PM by Randy

LOL...   do doubt!  I just went through this same process with my Dad... I feel your pain.

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Saturday, July 03, 2010 9:03 AM by mike

Actually I just went for an HD2 for my upgrade for this reason - i.e. WinMo 6.5 may be cr*ppy, but all of Outlook/Exchange syncs fine.

There seems to be gotchas with the others e.g. Android can't sync Tasks, etc. etc.