Motorola PEBL
First Impression: Very good. It looks like a smooth black rock that I found on the bottom of a trout river.
Once I opened it up (it's rather strange to open it up), I wasn't a huge fan of the look but it is very functional. The keys are extremely nice and very usable. They have a similar feel to the razr.
It's T-mobile's service so it is a GSM/GPRS phone but importantly it does not have EDGE capabilities. EDGE is the much higher speed data service that is becoming quite common on both the Cingular and T-mobile networks. It seems that, just as with the razr, Motorola missed the EDGE boat on this one which is really a shame.
The first thing I decided to check was the sync capabilities with the Mac OS X Tiger. Before I could sync, I needed to pair the PEBL with my Mac. This was incredibly easy. Very well done. I rarely have an easy experience pairing Bluetooth devices. The second thing to do was to set up iSync to merge my address book contacts into the phone. Very easy setup once again. I have around 500 contacts and the sync took about 10 minutes over Bluetooth. Seems a bit long to me. Unfortunately, when I checked the phone, the contacts were all there but instead of the contacts being grouped by each person, I had 3 entries for contacts who had 3 phone numbers. I checked for some settings to change this behaviour but no luck. To add insult to injury, the contact scrolling is extremely slow, so it would be very difficult to fine the contact I needed with this phone unless I decide to pare down the number of contacts or manually enter them in a consolidated way.
My calendar synced up perfectly. Very nice.
I decided to test the dial-up networking. As it turns out, the phone sent to me was on a pre-paid plan. After a bit of research into t-mobile dial-up networking, I found several very helpful resources. In particular, this article had everything necessary for completing the connection.
http://www.photoethnography.com/blog/archives/2005/06/info_setting_up.html
Once I completed the connection, however, I could not surf since was only assigned private IP addresses. I called customer support and technical services at T-Mobile to see if they could make a switch for me but their hands were tied. In any case, this phone is quite slick, but, like the Razr and the SLVR, I'd hold off until Motorola decides to incorporate EDGE into their products. The Motorola v557 probably offers the best bang for the buck as far as features but it's only really advertised through Cingular from what I have seen.
Once I opened it up (it's rather strange to open it up), I wasn't a huge fan of the look but it is very functional. The keys are extremely nice and very usable. They have a similar feel to the razr.
It's T-mobile's service so it is a GSM/GPRS phone but importantly it does not have EDGE capabilities. EDGE is the much higher speed data service that is becoming quite common on both the Cingular and T-mobile networks. It seems that, just as with the razr, Motorola missed the EDGE boat on this one which is really a shame.
The first thing I decided to check was the sync capabilities with the Mac OS X Tiger. Before I could sync, I needed to pair the PEBL with my Mac. This was incredibly easy. Very well done. I rarely have an easy experience pairing Bluetooth devices. The second thing to do was to set up iSync to merge my address book contacts into the phone. Very easy setup once again. I have around 500 contacts and the sync took about 10 minutes over Bluetooth. Seems a bit long to me. Unfortunately, when I checked the phone, the contacts were all there but instead of the contacts being grouped by each person, I had 3 entries for contacts who had 3 phone numbers. I checked for some settings to change this behaviour but no luck. To add insult to injury, the contact scrolling is extremely slow, so it would be very difficult to fine the contact I needed with this phone unless I decide to pare down the number of contacts or manually enter them in a consolidated way.
My calendar synced up perfectly. Very nice.
I decided to test the dial-up networking. As it turns out, the phone sent to me was on a pre-paid plan. After a bit of research into t-mobile dial-up networking, I found several very helpful resources. In particular, this article had everything necessary for completing the connection.
http://www.photoethnography.com/blog/archives/2005/06/info_setting_up.html
Once I completed the connection, however, I could not surf since was only assigned private IP addresses. I called customer support and technical services at T-Mobile to see if they could make a switch for me but their hands were tied. In any case, this phone is quite slick, but, like the Razr and the SLVR, I'd hold off until Motorola decides to incorporate EDGE into their products. The Motorola v557 probably offers the best bang for the buck as far as features but it's only really advertised through Cingular from what I have seen.
posted by Bill Butler @ 8:25 PM
2 comments
2 Comments:
I recently made a switch from Sony/Ericsson T610 to a Motorola PEBL. At first the phone looks impressive, but the technology underneath is years behind the T610, and that is a two year old model.
I mean: how do you send the pictures taken with the phone to your Mac?
Once you get the bluetooth synced, you can set up a public folder on the computer. From the camera menu on the phone, you can select each picture and send it to the computer. The picture will appear in whatever folder you designated for bluetooth downloads.
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