My New Toy

As much as I hate to admit it, in a few ways I'm a lot like an overgrown kid. That's especially been the case for the past week, as I've been breaking in (okay--let's be honest about it--playing with) my new toy: a Samsung SPH i500 smartphone.

I got my first Palm Pilot about two and a half years ago, and loved it from the start. Aside from th instrinsic "cool" factor of having a high-tech gadget to play around with, I found it enormously useful for coordinating all my e-mail and phone contacts in one place, keeping my work and personal schedules together, and being able to carry itineraries and directions in one place while I travel.

But lately, I'd been having trouble with my Palm. First, I frequently found that I wasn't carrying it when I needed it. I'd be at Borders, trying to figure out if I already owned a copy of a book I was salivating over. I know this will sound geeky, but I keep a copy of my book inventory on my Palm for just such an emergency--if I remember to bring it along, which I frequently didn't. Also, during the summer, it's just too bulky to carry PDA, cell phone, wallet, keys, etc. I needed to lose a gadget, or find one that would do double duty. And, in the end, my dear old m130 was just starting to show its age: wouldn't hold a charge for more than a few hours, not wanting to sync with my computer at work.

I also like the idea of having a mobile phone that's entirely mine, as opposed to one that's given to me for work. Frankly, I feel guilty using a station phone for personal business. And I was using the phone most heavily when I was travelling--which is not neccasrily always on station business.

Hence the smartphone. Initially, I was looking at the new Treo, from Palm. But I tried playing around with a couple of display models. I love the device, but it seemed to take up a lot of space, and I worried that I'd end up leaving the thing at home a lot--especially in the summer--thus leaving me worse off than before, with neither phone nor PDA. And the $400 price tag put me off; that's a lot to throw at a device I might end up not liking.

The Samsung, however, is basically a cell phone on steroids--powerful enough for what I wanted, but convenient to slip into a pocket. The hands-down coolest thing about it is being able to check the web from damn near anywhere: I'm at the theatre, wondering whether I'm going to get rained on during a dress rehearsal. No problem! Just get a weather forecast off the internet. Bango! Any news break since I left the house? Let's hit the New York Times and find out!

Yes, I'm a geek. But I actually find this incredibly cool.

The first few days were kind of rough. I couldn't figure out how to access my e-mail through it at first, and I still can't follow links in my e-mail messages. Some web sites take impossibly long to load (it's a lot slower than my connection at home), and I don't have my favorite sites all bookmarked and ready to go. But compared to where I was a month ago, I still feel like a kid on Christmas morning.