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The perfect mobile device?


Crivens200

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I know there's already loads of information on mobile devices for helping to learn Chinese on these forums already but I was hoping people would be able to give me some advice on what the perfect device would be.

I wonder - is it possible to install plecodict on a mobile phone?

From an alternative point of view, do pocket pc's double up as mobile phones (forgive my ignorance!)?

My ideal device would be one that has all the following features: Mobile phone, MP3 player, digital camera, and the ability to operate plecodict. Also, if the device has touch screen to enable me to input chinese characters by hand this would be perfect.

Is this perfect device available or am I living in dreamland?

Cheers for any advice.

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I have a Qtek 9000 (SPV M5000 / HTC Universal as it is called in some countries) Pocket PC Smartphone.

It has everything you need, plus a nice retractable keyboard.

It has GSM and 3G capabilities and bluetooth, wifi, IR.

It uses Windows Mobile 5.0 and has a very nice VGA (640*480) touch screen

The memory is 64MB, but you can put some SD card as I did for extra memory.

I like it a lot, the only drawback is it is bigger than a cellphone as it is more a PDA with phone capabilities.

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http://www.treocentral.com/content/Stories/735-1.htm

Review of the new Treo 700W, which runs on the Windows Mobile operating system. One potential problem is that the screen of a mobile phone PDA tends to be smaller than that of a non-phone PDA.

The Palm-based Treo 650 seems to be a few hundred dollars cheaper than the new 700W.

http://shop.treonauts.com/content/smartphones/index.htm

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We're working on a detailed page on this very subject for the revamped Pleco website (which should finally be going live sometime in mid-February) - the basic recommendation is to stick with Palm unless you have a specific reason to go with Pocket PC, given the extreme bugginess and generally poor design of Windows Mobile 5 and the (relative) stability of the latest Palms. I haven't actually gotten to play with one yet, but from the reviews I've read the Treo 700 seems to be very much a work in progress and isn't yet as streamlined as the 650 (which is not unreasonable considering it's Palm's first Windows Mobile device, I'm sure the Treo 750 will be vastly improved).

Digital cameras in mobile phones are indeed pretty lousy, but they're lousy regardless of platform; there are several good MP3 players available for Palm, and all current Palm and Pocket PC devices (even the ones with keyboards) have touchscreens that can be used for handwriting Chinese characters. For Chinese-language web browsing and document viewing/editing there are some significant advantages to going with Pocket PC, and same goes for complicated / processor-intensive applications like photo editing and (high-end) games, but if you just want to make phone calls, listen to music and run PlecoDict there's not really any reason to go with the Treo 700 over the 650, and in addition to being cheaper the 650 is more stable and user-friendly than the 700, so it's probably the better bet.

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Thanks for the advice everyone.

Actually, does anyone have experience of the BenQ P50? This looks like it does most of what I need. It's a pocket pc phone which runs on the windows mobile 2003 system. I take it I'll be able to install plecodict on this?

Incidentally, I saw a friends Motorola 728 yesterday and he has Jin Shan dictionary installed on it - looked pretty neat.

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  • 1 year later...

Did a search but this thread is all I found. Apologies. Question is: is there a Treo 750 which uses Palm OS available to purchase in China, or are they all Windows?

I want to buy a smartphone to run pleco, but they advise using Palm. Maybe if someone knows where a more appropriate thread is located you could just direct me to it. Many thanks.

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You could probably find one in Beijing or Shanghai or other similarly large cities, but I'd be surprised if you could get one in a smaller city. I'd also be hesitant to trust Taobao personally, but that's just me.

Took me ages to find a place in Qingdao that could order a Treo 680 in for me (I was looking for a 650, but they're getting old and are mostly just refurbished ones now). They didn't stock them, as most Chinese apparently prefer Windows (which, I guess, isn't surprising as it seems to have better localization capabilities than Palm models). Took a few days, had to leave a 500RMB deposit, but I got it, and it works just fine :D

I've got a Treo 680 and it's fabulous :D Only problem is that the battery life is a bit short, but you'll find that with any smartphone I believe.

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Took me ages to find a place in Qingdao that could order a Treo 680 in for me.

You can get treo 680's from stock in Kunming, which isn't exactly the centre of the universe... Perhaps that's because there are quite a few foreigners studying chinese here though...

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