Tips for phone number porting

Here is a small addendum on the new cell phone experience. When switching cell phone providers you need to take a bill from your current provider when signing up for the new service. This is necessary so you have the old account number available.

Also, if you are switching from Sprint, make sure to change to paper billing if you are on electronic, because you will not be able to log into the Sprint PCS website after your number is ported. This is because the phone number is used to log in and you can't log in to check your bill once the phone number is deactivated in the Sprint system.

My new bling-bling

I finally made the jump from Sprint and my Samsung i500 Palm phone. I'm now on Cingular with a Motorola V620. This phone is not officially available in the US but there are a few places in New York that import it and either Cingular or T-Mobile can set you up with a SIM card to use it on their service.

After having the phone for nearly a week, here's the rundown of what I've noticed:

Pluses of the new phone:
- works with the built in Bluetooth headset support in my Toyota Prius
- snazzy metal case
- external caller ID
- situational lighting
- easy to upload backgrounds, movies, or sounds
- can sync with iSync over Bluetooth
- can store addresses as well as phone numbers and emails (although this info is not syncable at the moment)
- camera and video capabilities (this is not a big deal to me really)

To expand on my points above, the Prius integration was my primary motivation to switch to a new phone. I've given up that either Samsung or Sprint will get on the ball anytime soon on this issue. Being able to receive a call by simply pressing a button on the steering wheel is amazing, and the sound quality seems pretty decent as well.

I was sorely in need of external caller ID on my old phone, to the point that I set it up to not answer when I opened the flip so I could see who was calling. Having an external display is a huge improvement there.

The situational lighting consists of some concentric circles around the Motorola logo on the outside of the phone, which can light up in different colors. For example, when charging it is white, and when Bluetooth is active it is blue. I've set up categories so I can get different colors when the phone rings depending on which category of contact is calling me.

Transferring files to the phone is as easy as opening up Bluetooth File Exchange and sending a JPEG, MP3, or 3GP video file over. Apparently the best resolution to use is 176 x 220 for a background, or 176 x 144 for a movie or photo you want to have available for browsing. MP3 ringtones can be 22KHz mono 32 Kbps.

I'm hopeful that at some point I will be able to sync addresses, since that was one of the reasons I picked this phone over the V551. For now, I can enter them on the phone when needed.

So far I haven't really used the camera/video features much, but I'm sure there will be some case where it comes in handy. Occasionally I see something interesting and wish I had my digital camera to take a picture, so maybe the camera phone will suffice the next time that happens.

All that being said, the move has not been without its problems.

Drawbacks:
- does not scale as well with a large phonebook as the i500
- required programming to check voicemail
- voicemail notifications show up as text messages from _@
- no dashes are shown in phone numbers
- less custom software available

The phonebook UI is a step backward from my i500. I had to prune down my address book to get it manageable on the V620, while I was syncing over 400 contacts to my i500. The main problems are that it is only possible to scroll using the first letter of the name (which is the first name, not the last name like I'm used to), and there's no way to scroll a page at a time. On the i500 the volume up and down buttons scrolled a page at a time.

I had to program in the number to call to retrieve voicemail. Had to ask Cingular tech support twice before I got the right number. On the plus side, this allowed me to work around the annoying voicemail password requirement. I just added a pause and the password and a pound sign to the end of the number and now I have the "one touch" voicemail checking I've been used to for the past five years on Sprint.

The next two issues are specific to getting a European phone I believe, and from what I read on the internet it is possible to customize the phone to avoid these problems using some Windows software to edit "seem" files using the USB cable. I'm still debating what to do about those... there's also the moto4lin project which may be able to do the seem uploading and downloading but I have no idea how hard it would be to port to Mac OS X.

On the Palm I could get any application imaginable and I had quite the software library built up. On the new phone, there's some basic PIM functionality built in but the only expansion available is Java games. Maybe I can find some games that won't nag me to send in $15 like some of the Palm games did.

Spurs Win Championship!

Well, it didn't happen as quickly as I expected, but the Spurs pulled off an amazing performance to close out the second half, showing the kind of defensive intensity they had been missing since games 1 and 2 in this series. And once the defense was clicking like it usually does, the offense worked itself out.

Way to go Spurs!

Spurs win pivotal Game 5

What a game it was tonight... it came down to Robert Horry making some clutch threes down the stretch and the Spurs defense stepping up at the end to win by one point in overtime.

This game reminded me somewhat of one from the 1999 playoffs when Sean Elliot hit a miracle three while falling out of bounds at the buzzer to win... at that point you could see that the Spurs were destined to win the title that year. At this point I think it's pretty clear that the Spurs have what it takes to win a close one with the Pistons, and I expect Game 6 on Tuesday to be another battle.

Go Spurs Go!