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Thou Shalt Not Covet Thy Neighbor's Bluetooth Phone


Sony Ericsson P800I confess. I like to learn everything about something before I dive in. But this time I didn’t.

The PowerPage has been continually feeding my technolust what with all the talk of the promised land that Sony Ericsson has brought to this earth. The Sony Ericsson P800. The T68i. Phones that don’t need cables to do everything. Phones that carrying an iPod and a phone and everything else that filled my pockets before.

But alas, that promised land is not the Midwest of the United States of America, my current home. And so technolust gives birth to technogreed which gives birth to technosin. Blinded by my sin, I purchased a T68i on eBay.

”What?” the gracious reader may ask.

Oh yes, I am guilty. For in my particular part of the Midwest, we only have US Cellular, Verizon and Sprint (none of whom I am happy with presently); none of these companies are ‘compatible’ with our beloved Bluetooth babies. But I thought myself more clever than I was, for I had friends just a half hour away using Cingular. I thought, “Well, I’ve seen the T68i labeled as working with Cingular, T-Mobile & AT&T. So I’ll just sign up for service a half hour away, get a plan that doesn’t have roaming charges and I’m set.”

Oh, what a painful, and heart-breaking one-hour-round-trip lesson that proved to be.

You see, there’s this little technology called GSM, and we don’t have it in the Midwest (save uber-metro’s like Chicago, which I’m no where near). Two different Cingular men briefly explained confusing terms such as GATE, CDMA, TDMA and no GSM (the only part I understood). They both contradicted one another, except where they rang clear that my little auction purchase was not going to presently work where I lived.

So as I make penance for my crimes, I cry out to my PowerPage brethren: How might I reach the Bluetooth-iSync-Nirvana of my coastal equivalents?

More specifically: I’m looking for a Bluetooth (preferably Sony) phone, that will work with Jaguar’s iSync, and will work here in the Midwest (specifically Central Illinois). I know of no such mythical beast, but perhaps a co-reader might.

If, perhaps, I learn along the way, what GSM, GATE, etc. mean as well, well, I’m eager and all the better for it (and even where everything is headed, mobile-phone market -wise). And I’m sure others would be too.

I don’t think the PowerPage is a venue for arguing over which service is better than which (seems a bit too much like proselytizing), but I am curious as to who seems to be a leader in the mobile service at a time when most every service seems bleak.

By Jason O'Grady

Founded the PowerPage in 1995.