Josh Bancroft’s TinyScreenfuls.com

Motorola MPx220

And they like it well enough:

“It looks like a regular cell phone but boy does it pack a lot of features and power! If you’re looking for a phone that offers easy syncronization to Outlook and MS Exchange, can carry much the same data as a PDA but don’t need the size, features and touch screen of a PDA, then do consider the MPx220. However, if you make plenty of calls in noisy public places, you may want to steer clear of the MPx220 because earpiece volume is low. If you plan to use wired or Bluetooth headsets then you won’t have to worry about this. We do hope Motorola issues an updater to increase the built-in earpiece and mic volume.”

They do make mention of the lackluster quality of photos taken by the camera, even though it’s 1.3 megapixel, and also the low speaker/earpiece volume during calls.

Isn’t it interesting how this phone was lusted after for so long by so many geeks (myself inlcuded), and when it finally came out, these relatively small issues allowed it be upstaged by the out-of-nowhere Audiovox SMT5600?

Fresh audio content, by yours truly, automatically and frictionlessly delivered to your MP3 player. Subscribe to the TinyPodCast feed, or visit the TinyPodCast site to download/listen to the MP3s directly.

Read on for more info on podcasting, and how to get plugged in to start listening.

Podcasting has been exploding in popularity in the last few weeks - you subscribe to an RSS feed in a special “podcatching” application, like iPodder or Doppler, which automatically downloads new audio content as it becomes available, and drops it into iTunes or Windows Media Player for automatic syncing to your iPod, Pocket PC, Smartphone, or other MP3 player of choice.

Check out iPodder.org for a directory of podcasts by category, and audio.weblogs.com for a list of the most recently updated podcasts (TinyPodCast pings there when it’s published).

If you only subscribe to one podcast, make it TinyPodCast. If you subscribe to two, make the second Adam Curry’s Daily Source Code (yes, that Adam Curry, from MTV). He’s one of the major driving forces behing podcasting, and his Daily Source Code podcast is one of the most interesting and entertaining out there. (Warning: occasionally contains language and/or content that some might find objectionable)

While election activity is reaching fever pitch, here comes the next installment of Phone Decision 2004. In this installment, I look at displays, the features that are most important to me, and a quick comparison of the main candidates.

Read on for the details.

When you think about it, the screen is probably one of the most important parts of a mobile device that’s going to be used for data access. If you’re just going to use your device as a phone, the screen only has to display your phonebook, show you who’s calling, and maybe show you the time, or play a simple game. For a mobile data device, however, you’re going to be reading email, sending and receiving instant messaging, and surfing the web (at least, if you’re like me you will). For those activities, the screen is crucial. You spend most of your time looking at it, and it had better be pleasing to the eye, or you’re not going to be a happy camper.

Screen size is the most obvious characteristic. Big displays are great to look at, and easy on the eyes, but they tend to make the device larger overall. In this area, the Treo 650 has the upper hand, followed by the Blackberry 7100t, and then the diminutive Audiovox SMT5600. The Treo is the largest device overall, bordering on full PDA size. The Audiovox is quite small, even sporting its 2.2″ screen. The Blackberry strikes a nice balance between a largeish screen and slim form factor.

The next important consideration in screens is resolution. This determines how many pixels can be displayed, and, coupled with the size of the display, how crisp and detailed images and text are. The Treo 650 has a 320×320 pixel screen in a square orientation - double that of the Treo 600, and higher than even a Pocket PC (excepting, of course, the new VGA models). The Blackberry’s screen is 240×260 in a portrait orientation, and images and text look exceptionally crisp and clear. The Audiovox’s display is the standard 220×176 portrait, and is much higher resolution that you would expect from such a small device. For web browsing, I like to make the font size as small as possibly while still being readable. This allows as much text as possible to be shown in each tiny screenful (ha!).

To me, color depth (how many colors can be displayed at once) is less of an issue on a mobile device. As long as it can display at least 16-bit color (65,000+), I’m happy. I can barely tell the difference between 16, 24, and 32-bit color on a desktop computer, let alone on a mobile device. In this category, all three candidates perform adequately, so it’s pretty much a wash.

So, the Treo 650 has the biggest, highest resolution screen, at the cost of making the overal device size more PDA-like. The BlackBerry 7100t occupies the middle ground, with a decent sized screen and nice resolution, without bulging past its slim lines. The Audiovox SMT5600 Smartphone has the smallest screen, in both size and resolution, but still manages to impress with text and image quality.

Which one did I pick? Post your guesses and reasoning in the comments section below, and look out for future installments of Phone Decision 2004. Maybe I’ll even be able to wrap this up to coincide with the election day deadline tomorrow (assuming multiple recounts don’t throw the whole final decision out into December).