Hi I was wondering if anybody could give me some suggestions for an affordable Personal Digital Assistant or Smartphone? (Is this the right part of the forum to ask stuff like this?) My old Personal Digital Assistant is starting to get buggy and crash a lot and I think that it's time that I get a new one, but all of the potential replacements these days seem to be smartphones, but I neither need, nor want, nor can afford a data plan or text messaging, or, for that matter, phone service; (as long as it can connect to ordinary wireless hotspots I'll have everything I need from it in terms of telecommunications). Can I even get a smartphone without buying phone service for it? If so, can anybody recommend a low priced one? All I really need is something that fits in a pocket that I can do word processing on and preferably also view images, PDF files, and other types of documents with, and I don't have much money to spend on it. Any suggestions?
It might be cheaper to just get an iPod Touch and a boring non-smart phone. Data plans cost quite a lot, and an iPod can do all of that stuff you want without a contract.
Do you know of any equivalent products to the iPod touch that aren't made by Apple> Also: Does anyone know if smartphone's non-phone features work without a SIM-card installed? If so I can just but a cheap secondhand smartphone on Amazon or something.
I don't know about iPod touch alternatives...maybe someone else would. Some phone companies are now switching over to not using SIM cards at all. Verizon is the only one I know off the top of my head...they just do everything over the network. I wouldn't know about getting it to work with some other network, though.
Like I said, I don't need it as a phone, I need it as a Personal Digital Assistant. I heard from a family member that they thought even the non-network features (the only ones I care about; I don't intend to use it as a phone at all) will be disabled without a SIM card installed; Is this true?
In recent years I have been looking at tablets for petty and trivial tasks when I am out of the house. But those times are so rare I have not bothered to do any serious research into it. The tasks I would likely do are play simple games, use the calculator, and edit my shopping list. That is pretty much it. My highest priority for the device in question is battery life. I do not want an uber device that requires a portable nuclear reactor to stay on. I really do not even mind if it is painfully slow for anything more than simple tasks, so long as the battery life is good. I hear good things about Ipads and smartphones all around. But tablets are a design more specific to non-communicative tasks that are a bit short of what a laptop would be needed for. There are many brands and designs of tablets with a wide range of features and prices. And with most of them, you simply never worry about accidentally making a phone call that will waste money, and you probably need not buy any sort of data plan either unless you want it. I hope this (Very uninformed) advice helps you.
I think a second gen iPod Touch would be perfect for you. It's like, 50 bucks for an 8gig, probably only 150 for 32 gb. And it does basically all of these things you want, has pretty nice battery life (about 6 or 7 hours-- at least enough to last all day), etc. And there are still quite a few games that work on the older device (including emulators if you so desire).
That sounds like a nice ting to have when you are sitting in a waiting room of your Doctors office.. Thank you for the advice. The cost is not bad either. I could probably manage to get one sometime this year. What can you tell me about its OS and applications? Can I compile things for it, or must I "Buy" applications from Apple? (I have not used any Apple product in a decade. Probably more.)
Samsung actually makes a couple of similar products to the ipod touch, i believe the Samsung Galaxy S Wifi is their alternative: basically a Samsung Galaxy S without the cell bit, and the galaxy hardware is fantastic (I'm running a galaxy nexus and would definitely vouch for their hardware). I've never seen or played with the wifi only model, but just so you know, there are non-Apple alternatives out there!
No one really makes pdas and electronic organizers anymore -- not sure why not. Sharp, for example, made some of the best of them way back when. I checked E-Bay, and I can't find the specific model I used (my mom still uses it, and I had to buy her another one on E-Bay a couple of years ago when her old display and keypad wore out. But if you are set on a PDA, you really have to shop E-Bay. I think the model that I used to use was like a Sharp YO-<something or other>. Some of them were the model of user-friendly that people have since, unfortunately, forgot about. Unfortunately, too many of them were pieces of crap, so there's that... As an owner of an iPad myself, I have to warn you that they are surprisingly heavy (I'm not sure about the iPad 3, but the iPad 2 is like carrying a brick around).
