The power of “I paid for this”

by on March 19, 2006

Doug Mahugh demonstrates the power of “I paid for this” rather than “cool thing I got for free.” Yes, I actually did spend my own money on my Cingular 2125.
He bought my phone after several other people around him also bought it and says “the hype is true: this phone rocks.”

Shel Israel also bought one and says something similar: “Short summary. I love this phone. It is a life changing piece of technology.”

  • I got the same phone in early January after traveling over the holidays and having trouble with reception. Cingular 2125 = problem solved.

    Similarly, several vendors I work with saw how good mine worked and have now purchased some for their team too. It's my best cell phone yet, after having about 1 to 2 phones per year for about the past 15 years.

    Best,
    ~Toby Getsch

    http://www.tweblog.com
  • Well, I have to throw a bit of cold water here. I've had my Cingular 2125 a week, and perhaps I just don't understand how to lock it down or something, but everytime I put it in my pocket, I activate something. Those buttons get pressed with the slightest pressure.

    By contrast, that on/off switch is a bear to work with. Getting the phone turned off when I get on an airplane is an ordeal I've never seen with any other phone.

    I don't want to bash it too much. It is a nice phone. It synched with my Outlook flawlessly, and now I have *all* of my contacts and calendar appointments on it. It's light, and the battery life is good. The reception is the best I've seen.

    So overall, I like it. But I curse it every time I put it in my pocket and here it beep to indicate that I've activated something inadvertantly. Or even worse, when I realize it called someone because I bent over to pick up a pen off the floor. Anyone got advice on dealing with that?
  • You lock it by holding the Red button in for about 1 second.

    I find I just use my fingernail to turn it on and off. Not difficult for me.

    You unlock it by clicking the left navigation button and then the star button.
  • I picked up an i-mate SP5 just before christmas (another HTC phone... I have no idea what it's HTC model name is, or how it compares to the 2125) and it's great. Has a few minor niggles (like I wish you could set the right soft button on the today screen to, well, something else; lots of icons are not up to the 240x320 screen; the IE user agent says a lower res, so all microsoft sites get squashed), but the wifi sync to exchange is a great great feature.
  • Here's the trick on turning the 2125 on and off: the button slides down (if you're holding the phone vertically). If you try to press in on the button, logical as that seems, it's very hard to move it. But if you slide it down toward the screen, you can do it very easily.

    The Cingular rep told me this is a recurring complaint due to the fact the button looks like something you'd press on, but actually it moves laterally.
  • Robert and Doug - thanks. You've cured my two problems. Now I hope I'll love it as much as you guys do.

    My only lingering question is why those points are not in the Quick Start Guide. It says "Press and hold the POWER button to turn on the phone". And it has instructions for "locking" (i.e. securing) the phone with a password, but nothing I can find on Robert's tip.
  • Jason
    Looks like a nice phone. I love my iMate JASJAR (thanks, PDC!), so I don't think I'll be picking up one soon.
  • murph
    Slightly odd question - how does one put a newline into a text or an email...?
  • murph, you've asked one I can answer. Press down on the joystick while editing. That's basically an anywhere you're working.
  • I also have this phone and it's great. With the Core Pocket Media Player and Pocket Divx encoder (both free) I can pull shows off my TiVo and encode them for my phone. On a 512mb mini sd card I can store 3-4 hours of video - two movies or a bunch of sitcoms!

    I recommend getting a screen protector to avoid scratches. I went with the "InvisibleShield" and it installed flawlessly (no bubbles under the screen).
  • Christopher Coulter
    Heck, you can find rabid SPOT users out there still, but testimonials (even those that paid for it) don't make it so. Testimonials are quite a common gotcha tactic of late night cable TV infomercials.

    A million reasons and a million motives...
  • Brian Lutz
    I considered switching to one of the SMT5600 smartphones back when you were using one of those, but ultimately I decided the smartphone UI was too limiting after all the time I've spent using PPCs. I finally ended up going for a Sprint PPC-6700 (all four of the big US carriers have very similar offerings) which, in spite of some design issues, works great for the stuff I do, and is far less restrictive than a Smartphone as to what can be done with it.
  • I've got a Sprint PPC-6700 too ... which became a lot more useful after Sprint released a ROM upgrade earlier this week that enables DirectPush and a number of other cool features. (Go to http://www.sprintpcs.com/downloads and select "Windows CE" in the dropdown box to get access to it)...
blog comments powered by Disqus