Betty and I had been using Samsung X427 phones for about the last 2 years. They were ok, nothing fancy. Small flip phones that had a pretty color screen but if you wanted more than the 5 pictures that came with them you had to pay to download new ones. They had the same deal with ringtones. New ones had to come from Cingular. They weren’t expensive but I hate paying even $.99 for a short tune.
Last week we got new Samsung D357 phones. Talk about features! They have the new Push-To-Talk feature that Cingular hopes will steal people away from Nextel. PTT is basically nationwide walkie-talkie. I’m not sure how much we’ll use it but you don’t get the great deal on the phone if you don’t get PTT.
They are also Bluetooth equipped. That means they can interface with any other Bluetooth device like a wireless headset, PDA, Camera, or PC. I got a USB Bluetooth adapter for my computer and learned some cool things I can do with the phones.
I can take any picture and turn it into wallpaper. I can take any song and turn it into a ringtone. When I say any I mean any that are capable of being digitized. Of course you can digitize any picture using a scanner and you can digitize any song using mp3 software so I guess that means “any”.
Another cool feature is you can assign a picture and ringtone to someone in your address book as a caller id. Now when Betty calls me it pops up her picture and plays “Barbie Girl” by Aqua(her idea). When I call her my picture pops up and it plays “Bohemian Rhapsody” by Queen(again, her idea).
The phone doesn’t have a camera but I don’t mind because Boeing doesn’t allow camera phones anyways. I’m pretty sure there are a lot of employees using them but I don’t see any reason to break the rules. If I want to take a picture I’ll use my camera.
So that’s the latest excitement in our lives.