Chiriquí Chatter

Back in August I wrote that I had found what I hoped would be my replacement for my aging Palm Pilot. Well it came in last Friday. It is a Sony P910a cell phone. This is a new phone that Movistar has started carrying. While it is a new model here in Panama, it has been in the US for a couple of years. It is selling in Panama for $600, which was out of my ballpark.

I was fortunate enough to find one that an individual had in the US and since his company had given him a new Blackberry and he just wanted to get rid of it. I was able to get it for less than $50 and shipping and handling cost me about the same. Since it was valued at less than $50 there was not duty to pay. I was concerned about it getting here without damage, but it arrived and while it is about two years old, it looks like new.

There are several Sony 900 devices, but the one that works in Panama is the Sony P910a. That is the only one that covers the 850 frequency band. I went by Movistar to see what I needed to do to get it activated on my old account. While I waited, a nice gentleman put in a sim card and activated it. The best part was that there was no charge to get this done. I thought I would have to at least purchase the sim card.

Let me tell you a little about this little beauty. This is called a “smart phone” meaning that it does more than just make and receive calls. It has a built in memory of 65 mg. It also uses a memory stick that can go up to 1 gig in size. This phone came with a 32-mg memory stick.

Here is shot of the phone waiting for a call.

It has a multipurpose thumbwheel on the left side of the photo and when you press it, this graphic display appears. Then by turning the thumbwheel, it will select one of the choices. From left to right you see an icon for messages (text or email), contacts, call list, calendar and applications. Depressing the thumbwheel again would bring up the selected choice. In this photo the calendar was selected.

If you fold down the numeric keypad, then you have a small keyboard. When you get used to it, you can type entries with your thumbs. I am not used to it yet. This photo is with the keypad open and you see the large display screen with some of the options showing. Again you can use the thumbwheel to select what you want.

The first entry in the last photo is for the built in camera. If there is a disappointment to this device, it has to be the camera. The photos that it takes, do not have the resolution of a good digital camera, but in a pinch it will do the job. Incase you have a flying saucer land in front of you, this is better than not having a camera. Here is a shot I took yesterday evening as I was out on a walk. With my other camera this would have been very nice with the colors in the sky. You can see that this is very grainy, so this falls in the category of emergency camera.

Further down the list you see “Music Player”. You can fill up your extra memory or memory sticks with your favorite music. This is sort of a Sony Ipod phone.

Below that you see Internet. Yes, you can get to the Internet, but the speed is slow and on not a good use of my prepaid minutes.

The calendar, contacts, tasks and other items that I keep in Outlook on my PC can be synced to the Sony. I have my entire contact list with me and if I add something during the day, it will record it on my PC when I when I place the Sony in the PC docking/charging station the next time.

I downloaded and installed the SlovEd Spanish/English dictionary. The next photo shows the first screen that comes up when I activate the dictionary. It is a word of the day – small training aid to assist in learning a word each day. In this photo the English word is followed by several Spanish words.

This last photo shows a Spanish to English display for “cuenta” followed with English meanings. I apologize for the quality of the photo. I assume it must have something to do with the refresh rate of the display.

To the left of “cuenta” you will see a small speaker. If you click on the speaker, you will hear a pronunciation of the word. That was an add on that I am trying out, but doubt that I will keep. The dictionary application is $29 and for 10,000 pronunciations it adds another $10. It also uses up an extra 10mg of memory.

I couldn’t use the translation software from my Palm, since the Sony uses the Symbian OS and not the Palm OS. Prior to moving to the Palm, I had used a PSION Series 5 and it was one of the products that used the Symbian OS. Then Psion dropped out of the market and started working with phone manufactures. Sony and Nokia use the Symbian OS. I loved my PSION and I have now been reunited with its OS.

Tags: Spanish Lessons