Which Smartphone is right for me?
Really Sarah Syndication wrote a great blog post about an Israeli app called tawkon, that monitors the radiation outputs from your phone. This prompted me to ask her for an opinion about which smartphone I should buy. Not only did she give me a thoughtful and informative reply, but she did so as a blog post. I feel honored!
I am making the switch from my no-frills simple phone (that doesn’t have texting at all) to a smart phone, because I have taken on more work/clients, and will need them to be able to reach me more easily. This was a reward I had promised myself when I earned it as a business owner, so it means a lot to me. But which to buy? I asked on Linkedin, thinking that a professional setting was the right place to go. I received no answer. I asked friends who all said “it is a matter of personal choice.”
I received two pieces of helpful advice, both suggesting to me the same thing. One was Sarah’s posting, and the other was the random customer service guy at Verizon. He obviously didn’t want me to go the Iphone route, but that notwithstanding he gave me good advice.
G-d willing, I will soon be the new owner of a Blackberry.
That advice basically has been that if you want something very functional for work purposes, the Blackberry is your best bet. If you want cool apps and toys and a lot of fun with the smartphone you are getting anyway, then go with the Iphone. As for the Droid? Well, Sarah explains it best, but not happening just yet for me or most of the market, apparently. The last thing I need is more distraction from work, so any cool and fun apps is not a good selling point for me. And as for  syncing issues, I haven’t been an apple person since I graduated college, and don’t forsee going back no matter what my Mac friends tell me. (Which they do, often.)
This past year I wrote about my challenges to work as a work-at-home-mom with my little one with me. This year he will be in school, and I will be working full-time for the first time in over a decade. It is a frightening prospect, as I become one of those cliche women trying to “balance it all” like in the magazines. I am excited about the work, though, and am grateful to be doing almost all of it from my home office.
I truly hope the Blackberry becomes a helpful tool in my juggling act, and not another gadget that distracts me from that which is important.
Thanks, Really Sarah Syndication!
Funny. I went through they same thing a month ago (the phone part anyway).
Getting yourself into situation when you check & respond to E-mail 24×6 is not healthy. Even worse is if you train your clients to expect this.
Enforcing “no candy” is no match to resisting the allure of binging smart phones with the latest message (Pavlog’s dog is probably laughing at us).
Being able to sync & update your calendar, however, is critical. I find that when I get busy or distracted it is all too easy to forget an appointment. Having 7 kids to provide distractions must make that much worse.
The other thing is you don’t to meet someone the street, agree to meet her next Tuesday only to discover when you get back home that you already agreed to drive the carpool at the same time!
I never turned on the work E-mail function on my phone and only sync my calendar. Watching my friends glued to their phones makes me happy I did.
I really appreciate the tips. I am so happy to learn from others’ experiences… I definitely will try to train myself and others not to expect email replies 24×6. (I was answering emails from my client less than five hours before my last child was born, in between contractions.)
When I can’t figure out the syncing, I will know who to contact!
I am one of those Apple haters, so you made a good decision to avoid the iPhone. I have played around with a Droid a few times, and I like those. My friends with Crackberry’s, I mean Blackberry’s, all seem to be happy with the decision.
For now, I am still using my phone that does little more than calls, texts, and bad quality pictures. I am sure I will upgrade someday soon. Enjoy the new phone!
Crackberry addict here. So far I have managed to avoid most of the bells and whistles, and checking my email is a luxury I know how stop when necessary. But I do love being able to snap pictures of whatever takes my fancy (mostly for my blog), and texting is a dream when you have a QWERTY keyboard.
Thanks for the kind words. For me, a critically helpful action has been to turn off auditory notifications of new mail on my computer AND on my Blackberry. That way, when I want to check my mail, it’s there, but there is never an interruption or signal to call me to look. The push to check always comes from me (which is often enough!).
Also, I find that I really use my Blackberry a lot to send MYSELF email reminders of things to do later. I pick these up when I sit down at my computer later. It saves a lot of forgotten details, making me more effective and efficient.
As long as your priorities are really clear in your own mind, you will find the systems that work best for making YOU more effective and efficient! Good luck!
Sarah
Great advice. (Again.) Thanks. I will have to let you know when I finally actually get the thing.