Could you Survive 2 weeks without a SmartPhone?

From the looks and messages from people, I would think that it was impossible for some of you to live without your phones.

Imagine you had to revert back to a Blackberry Bold or Curve, I used both but more on that in a minute, could you do it? Sure for a day or 2 maybe but 2 weeks?

The problem started the day before we left for vacation to Israel, the Thursday of Thanksgiving. I dropped my HTC Vivid Android phone and it landed smack on a rock and shattered the glass. Yeah that sucked, but it was still useful, so I made do on our trip.

Either while away or shortly after we returned I ordered a new digitizer off of eBay. When that came in, I proceeded to replace my glass and put it all back together. Powered it on and saw a line cracked and just a shade of red or blue or green and nothing else. Yes, I had damaged the LCD at some step along the way. Back to eBay. Ordered a new LCD which came today.

Took it all apart, replaced the LCD and put it back together and happy to say it is good to go again.

I learned a lot about how I work and how useful or useless a smartphone is to me.

The BB Curve was the slower device I had laying around which is unlocked and I could get all my emails but web browsing was useless and apps were iffy. My friend Paul gave me his old BB Bold which was MUCH faster but still locked down by a BES and so I only had phone service. I decided I would learn to live with my office's iPad but use the BB Bold because at least the browser worked efficiently.

I now know that the Bold had a crappy keyboard with the weird left/right slanted keys, but since I rarely used a BB over the years, despite managing numerous BES environments, I figured I could live with this. But now I was a 3 device person, including the laptop. When my phone is working, I rarely need to use the iPad. I prefer typing on my phone over the iPad.

The iPad, while an excellent reader device, really is lacking in keyboard intelligence or ease of use. In this day and age of alpha-numeric passwords is it so much to ask apple to let me just hold a key down to get to the alternate key or number? Or to hold it down to get a capital letter? My old Nokia phones always did this and that was in 1999.

It is nice to keep so many screens open on an iPad and the battery life is awesome, shame it is such a PITA to type. I could never type this blog post on it without a bluetooth keyboard. But I could go 2-3 days without needing to recharge it.

I did not exactly survive 2 weeks without my phone because I had the iPad by proxy. But my postings or photos from the holidays and trips were limiting and that was a shame. The iPad has a lousy still camera option. It could record sound and video but not great quality. I missed the simplicity of opening one of many apps and take photo and post it. I did not miss seeing my email, not one bit. I did miss my contacts and phone numbers but that also was interesting. I had few calls, thanks to the holidays, and did not need to call too many people either.

So I went semi-cold turkey on social media and came out of it with an interest to do more and looking forward to this year.

For everyone that wondered where I was or why I replied in short or cryptic ways the last 2 weeks, now you know the reason.

Traveler error about incorrect server version

As a follow up to my post about the traveler fix we received.

Do not fat finger your typing, as I did.

I included an extra = sign in the xml file and that presented the following challenges:

1) new installations would fail with an error that says:
"The Server you have contacted must be upgraded to support this version of Lotus notes Traveler"
2) Devices would repeatedly get asked to download the updated or newer client

While these were my instructions:
\traveler\cfg\client\VersionInfo.txt

#Lotus Notes Traveler - Android
Lotus\ Traveler.Android.version=8.5.3.2 201207031233

If Linux OS - be sure the file pemissions/ownership is not changed.

I somehow added an extra = sign before the version number.

The IBM team sent me this URL to test the server which I provide in case anyone else sees these errors.

http://www.yourdomain.com/servlet/traveler?action=checkForUpdate&deviceType=Android&Version=0

You should get in return a message that looks like this(your verssion number may be different):

AppName=Lotus Traveler
DownloadLink=http://www.yourdomain.com/traveler/LotusTraveler/android/LotusTraveler.apk
Version=8.5.3.2 201207031233
LMIAppConfigFile=traveler.properties

In the incorrect xml file, the version line showed version== and thus the two sides could not communicate properly.

Live and learn.

Nothing but the net or is it the RIM of the net

Let's suppose RIM bid on the unused wireless spectrum. What would it gain?
TV capacity to your phone in an efficient way? Perhaps.
A stronger presence for remote areas and consumer usage, possibly.
A private network to kill off At&T, verizon, et al? Definitely.

Does the Cloud need RIM? Not really.
Do you need a Blackberry? Why?

What does it do that you can not do from almost any other device?
Not talking about iPhone right now.

What does BES do that the Good server can not?

What do you really need from your phone?
Voice dictation for sending emails would be nice.
A 3d holographic view of web pages or text would be helpful as the tiny screens we read are slowly going to kill our eyes.
Intelligent controls on the device. If I am pulling mail from a site without a spam control at the server side like my ISP, thanks Comcast, why can't I run one on my phone? Maybe this exists, haven't checked, sorry.

What about elderly people that need bigger keys or larger screens/fonts?

Also why can't my blackberry, or any other phone handle multiple streams of BES/Traveler or Good? That would be helpful in this day and age when the average person has a 1/2 dozen accounts, even if they only read 2-3.

I have the following (leaving out all my business clients that I have email with and forward to my main corporate email):
Comcast NEVER checked
Yahoo in use
Gmail rarely used
MSN very rarely
Netscape forgot password
corporate daily
personal daily
kids they are just learning to type
wife's
This blog's email
previous personal domain
previous business domain

But can I get more than one of these on my phone via BES, Traveler or Good's usage of PUSH email? NO. Even if I had a BES or whatever server to handle them all, the answer is still no.

So we are almost there...but not quite. And as more devices are internet connected does it look better to have a phone or a web device with a built in speaker and mike for VOIP?

Some questions I have been thinking about as I am in search of a new phone and look for a realistic answer to my dilemma.

Anyone from RIM, Google, Nokia, At&T or anywhere have some inputs I 'd like to hear them. otherwise if you know a VC I have a pitch to make.