silly phones

[topaz]

Thanks for all the feedback on phones. After playing around with the store models enough to make the Verizon employees wince every time I walked in, I settled on the LG VX7000. It's a flip-top (which appeals to me for strange and nameless reasons) has a pretty decent camera, and is supposedly supported by BitPim, which should allow me to download pictures and configure the phone with wallpaper and ringtones without paying Veri$on more pointless access fees. I have 15 days to decide whether to return it, so I'm playing the hell out of it for now.

Tim playing around with his new toy at work:

Jeez. I'm getting old.

Pro: it has more address book categories than the old phone, and lets you create new categories.
Con: it only allows you to put 10 people in any single category. What kind of bizarre decision was that?

Comments

[stephe.livejournal.com]

Jeez. I'm getting old.

Yeah. Remind me to post a photo sometime of the gray streaks in my beard.

[cruiser.livejournal.com]

But not too old for new electronic gizmo toys!

[vito-excalibur.livejournal.com]

Old but cute! :)

[weegoddess.livejournal.com]

Uh-huh. Just what I was thinking...

[jss]

Me three.

[qwrrty.livejournal.com]

And look who's talking!

[qwrrty.livejournal.com]

You are so going to try me.

[vito-excalibur.livejournal.com]

::shiver:: Maybe someday...

[crouchback.livejournal.com]

I hope I look as good as you do when I reach your advanced age. :)

[qwrrty.livejournal.com]

you know. I wasn't fishing for compliments, I swear!

But thanks. :-)

[crouchback.livejournal.com]

Is it posible your desire to have a fliptop is connected to Star Trek?

[jacflash.livejournal.com]

Is there any other reason to desire a fliptop?

[jss]

Yes, especially if you want to top, too.

Or were you still talking about phones?

[qwrrty.livejournal.com]

Given that I'm hunting for a ringtone that makes that whistly-chirpy sound, I think it seems unlikely to be any other reason.

(Carefully ignoring jss1113's insinuations.)

[jss]

Ignoring, perhaps, but certainly not denying or refuting, I'll notice.

If you want that sound effect as your ring tone, find someone who has the sound effects digitized and use standard sound editing and conversion tools to make it temporally-long enough and in whatever format your phone accepts for ring tones. (I don't know that I have STTOS effects online anywhere any more. I'll check when I'm back in the home-office, where the Mac's old enough it might still have them on it.)

[jss]

Nope. TNG I've got, TOS I don't seem to.

[jacflash.livejournal.com]

Go here (http://services.tos.net/sounds/sound.html) and scroll down to tos-comm.au (http://services.tos.net/sounds/tos-comm.au).

[jss]

(Warning: TOS geekery ahead.)

That's fine if he wants the sound effect of the communicator opening. But maybe he want{s|ed} the effect of the signal before it's anwered (the dual beep).

[jacflash.livejournal.com]

Well, he did specify "that whistly-chirpy sound". The other one's more of a boop-boop, really.

[lcohen]

y'all are scaring me.

[funball.livejournal.com]

Actually, my first though upon seeing this picture was that you keep you hair much shorter than you did way back when in our college days! :-)

[qwrrty.livejournal.com]

Well, there is that. This is pretty recent, though! I got the ponytail lopped off (http://www.livejournal.com/users/topaz_munro/13796.html) in March, and had the head buzzed a month or two ago. Gonna try it this way for a while and see what I think. :-)

[ghislaine.livejournal.com]

Are you happy with the phone so far? I'm in the same boat with Verizon and am weighing my options. You and I had the same phone before you upgraded too, as I recall, so your comparison will be particularly helpful for me. :)

Thanks!

[qwrrty.livejournal.com]

It's not too bad, though I think it could be better. Some things that annoy me:

• the phonebook allows you to put contacts into categories (e.g. "business," "personal," "family," "school" etc.) but only allows you to put 10 contacts into any one category. How insane is that?
• Verizon claims there's no way to get pictures off the phone except by mailing them to yourself, for which (of course) you pay additional fees. There's an open-source tool that will let you download them to your laptop, and it claims to work with this phone; I'm looking into that. (You do have to buy a cable, which costs $40 from VZN but can probably be had for less elsewhere.)
• Some of the menu navigation choices are---how shall I put this?---boneheaded. For example, the phone lets you record your own ringtone (very cool!). I recorded one as a test and then wanted to delete it. There is no "erase" option in the ringtone menu. The manual is completely silent on the subject of deleting ringtones. I finally found the answer on Google:
  1. go to menu and go to the Get It Now tab
  2. go to Get Tunes and Tones
  3. scroll to the appropriate ringtone that you want deleted
  4. you should see 'erase' in the lower left hand corner... hit the appropriate key and it will prompt you to erase.

In general the thing feels like a rush job, like it has a lot of nice stuff but that the documentation and user interface did not get the attention it should have. This is probably a complaint that could apply to any cell phone anywhere, of course. :-) I'm not dissatisfied with it, it just feels like it could have been done better. If I don't encounter any really serious flaws in the next week or so, I'll probably be keeping it.

[ghislaine.livejournal.com]

Wow, that was a much more thorough and helpful review that I was expecting. Thanks!!