Phones4u aside, the phone is mostly fantastic.  Jumping on the touchscreen bandwagon, the Tocco Lite is an iPhone for plebs like me who can’t afford the real thing.  My previous phone, just for reference, was a Motorola L6, which was gorgeous, but was beginning to show its age a little (not in performance, just in a few cosmetic scratches to the case, which turns out to be more plastic than metal, despite appearances).  The Tocco Lite has a comparatively enormous screen, is more or less the same size, and is actually fractionally lighter.  That’s good, because it means it’ll sit in my pocket nicely.

The Good Stuff

The touchscreen works very nicely, and although it isn’t clever enough to handle multi-touch, it responds very well and doesn’t get things wrong very often at all.  It’s a 240×400 pixel screen, which is nice and bright, and fantastic for viewing photos on.

The home screen has three views to it, a little like the iPhone’s application pages, which you scroll through horizontally.  The Tocco Lite doesn’t have application icons, but it does have widgets, which are essentially little visual shortcuts to various areas of the phone.  They can be placed anywhere on your home screen, though I found that I actually had to be careful where I put them so that I could still swipe left and right to the other parts of the home screen – if I happened to have my finger on a widget it would try to move the widget around rather than going to the other screen.  I’ve learnt to keep an area clear towards the bottom of the home screen, and do all my swiping there instead.  It’s just a shame you can’t add your own widgets.

Calls and text messages, and in fact all the functionality of the phone itself, are all fine.  It’s all pretty predictable, with everything working as you’d expect it to.  With very few physical keys, text messaging is a key area for a touchscreen phone to get right, and I’m pleased to say that the Tocco Lite performs very well in this respect.  You can enter your text via a numberpad that comes up, using the familiar T9 predictive text to help you, or you can tilt the phone on its side and use a full qwerty keyboard – that’s my preferred input method at the moment, simply because I find it faster typing with two thumbs than with one.  It’s fairly accurate most of the time, so unintended spelling mistakes are kept to a minimum.

I mentioned earlier that the screen was good for viewing photos.  Actually this is a bit of a showpiece for the Tocco Lite.  Bring up your photos (which, sadly, are a little clumsy to get to) and they come up on the screen filling the width of the screen, whether you hold the phone normally or on its side.  In fact, you can hold the phone whichever way up you like, even upside down, and it’ll still show you the image so that it’s the right way up.  Very neat.  And as an extra party trick, with the phone held in landscape, tilting the phone slightly left or right will cause the photos to slide along, as if falling off the side of the phone.  Very cool.  Unfortunately it does mean that if you want to view a photo for any length of time you have to make sure you hold the phone still, otherwise it tries to scroll through them all.

Internet is reasonable, with the default browser being fairly straightforward to use.  It’s nothing special though, and as the phone relies on GPRS and EDGE it’s not particularly fast.  I’ve actually ditched the built in browser though, and have downloaded Opera Mini 5, which is much nicer to look at and use, and by compressing everything via a proxy server actually makes it quite speedy, even on GPRS.

The Bad Stuff

It’s not all good news, unfortunately.  The back of the case, under which hides the battery and the SIM card, was devilishly difficult to get off first time round (I eventually managed it by taking some advice from a forum and pushing with the palms of my hands, rather than my fingers), and once off, it was a little too easy to slide off again afterwards.  The first time I went out with the phone in my pocket the back of the case stuck itself to my leather wallet, and when I pulled the phone out it was missing its back casing!  I’ve resolved that for now by simply putting the phone in the other way round, so the screen is against my wallet instead.

Another in-pocket problem has also become apparent – it far too easily unlocks itself.  The lock button is on the side of the phone, and is just a little too easy to press.  To unlock the phone all you have to do is hold in the lock button on the side, or press a button that appears on the screen.  Several times now the phone has unlocked itself in my pocket and tried to set alarms.  Thankfully never anything more serious than that, no phone calls made, but an annoyance nonetheless.  The Tocco Lite does come with a Gesture Unlock feature, where you draw a letter on the screen to make it unlock, but that seems to be a little redundant given how easy the phone is to unlock.  I think it would have been better to have an option to have Gesture Unlock as the only way to unlock the phone, rather than as an additional way, deactivating the lock button on the side and forcing you to unlock it deliberately.  If it continues to be a problem I might have to put a number lock on the SIM card or something as well.

One thing I was a little disappointed by was the lack of connectivity to Mac computers.  I really wanted to be able to synchronise the phone with my computer, so that contacts and my diary could be copied across by Bluetooth, as I’d done with my Motorola L6.  Sadly, no one thought that Mac connectivity was important, so it doesn’t work.  This meant I had to manually put in all my contacts again, which was a pain.  I’m getting round the diary issue for now by loading up Opera and using Google Calendar instead.  Takes a little longer, but it works.

And my final complaint is that loading additional applications onto the phone can only be done via the phone’s web browser.  You can’t connect the phone to your computer and copy the files across, they just come up as unrecognised files and don’t install.  So you have to download the .jar files from a WAP site instead (I’ve been using euploader.com).  And you have to do this with the built-in browser, not Opera.  It would have been nice to have been able to transfer stuff across from the computer, rather than having to pay for my internet twice.

Conclusion

On the whole, though, it’s a fantastic little phone.  If you love the iPhone but can’t afford one, this might well be a good choice for now.  Sure, there are better phones out there, but you pay more as a result.  The Tocco Lite is affordable, looks fantastic, is blindingly easy to use, and I’m very happy with mine.  I’d give it a very respectable 8/10.

Well, sort of.  In actual fact the box was a hand-made creation, the template for which I had made on my computer and printed onto card, constructing quietly and surreptitiously in the study so she wouldn’t notice.  Fairly simple, but it had a sticky tape hinge, our wedding logo on the top half, and the clasp was made with two split pins and a tiny elastic band.  It was quite ingenious.  Inside, the earrings were actually just a printout from a web site, which could have been a let-down, were it not for the explanation – I was taking my wife to Cribbs Causeway to buy her the real thing.

A little explanation is needed here for those of you unaware of our particular problem.  We live in the country.  The middle of Somerset, to be more precise.  The nearest motorway is about an hour away, and the only way to get to one is via A-roads, some of which have two lanes, but most of which don’t.  In short, we’re a little cut off from the main thoroughfares of motoring.  In addition, our nearest town is Shepton Mallet, which is tiny.  There are shops, of course.  They’re both very nice.  Perhaps a slight exaggeration, but let’s just say that the range of shops isn’t exactly dazzling.  Day to day this isn’t a huge problem, but for special things like earrings we’re pretty much up a creek without a pointy stick.

So I took Ellie to Cribbs Causeway.  This gave us a choice of four good jewellery shops, plus those fashion accessory shops too.  The reasoning went beyond just practicality of purchase, of course.  I could have ordered something online, after all.  The trouble with that is that a) you don’t get to hold it in your hand beforehand, b) it might not be what she wanted, c) the postal strikes might have caused problems with the delivery date, and d) if it was coming by post Ellie would have got to it before I could.

It was undeniably the slowest wander around a mall I think either of us have ever embarked on; a fairly heavily pregnant Ellie doesn’t make for a nippy walking speed.  Still, it allowed us a chance to spend time looking at everything, which was good.  I have to admit it was the first time I had ever been into Accessorize – let’s face it, it’s not somewhere I need to go into for myself.  She finally settled on a lovely little pair of earrings from a very reputable store, which sparkled very satisfyingly.  They’re simple enough to be worn on a regular basis, so not too showy, but still gorgeous to look at.  I was pleased with the purchase, and Ellie is too.

Of course, there is more to Cribbs Causeway than just jewellery shops.  A lot more.  In particular, I found myself in a mobile phone shop asking to try out a Samsung Tocco Lite, which I had been researching online for a while as a replacement for my Motorola L6.  It was nice to actually feel and use rather than just seeing photos, and I was suitably impressed.  Then came something a little unexpected – Ellie persuaded me to buy it, there and then.  Not exactly what I’d planned on spending my money on that day.  Still, she seemed keen that I should buy it, and it was after all the phone I had fallen in love with (after the iPhone of course, which is still infuriatingly beyond my meagre budget), and the demo in the shop had only confirmed it as being a good phone.  So, still in a bit of a daze, I bought it.

It’s a full touch screen phone, with a bare minimum of actual buttons, and everything else happening on screen instead, in much the same way as the iPhone, just on a smaller budget.  It’s about the same overall size as my L6, so it should still fit comfortably in my pocket, and it’s actually lighter too.  I’m really impressed with it so far, in particular the ease of use of the touchscreen qwerty keyboard which pops up when you rotate the phone on its side.  I think the only niggles I’ve found so far are that it doesn’t support Java games very well, and it doesn’t synchronise with my Mac.  But overall it’s a fantastic little phone, and I shall undoubtedly enjoy using it for some time to come.  It did feel a little out of place, purchasing such a lovely new toy on my wife’s birthday, but I maintain it was her idea…

My job means sitting in front of a computer all day, playing with the internet.  There are of course times when I leave my desk, or need to use a different computer, and then it’s nice to still have the same tools to hand.  So I’ve put my diary onto Google Calendar, so that it’s available wherever I am.  Nice.

Oh no, wait a minute.  I also need that same calendar on my mobile phone.  So far there is no bridge directly between Google Calendar and my Motorola L6, unless I load up Google Calendar on my phone’s browser – but that costs me money because I’m on a PAYG tariff and I don’t get any free data, so that’s out of the question (not least because it’s far from instant, even using the incredible Opera Mini browser and its clever servers).  So, that means having the calendars on iCal as well, so that I can use iSync to copy everything across.  And here’s where it all gets rather complicated.

There are two ways to get a Google Calendar onto iCal.  One is to subscribe to it, using the address that Google Calendar gives you in the settings.  Unfortunately that’s a read-only solution, which isn’t all that useful.  The second option is to set up iCal to use Google Calendars as a WebDAV server (I’m not going to go into the details here, just search around for “iCal WebDAV Google” or similar).  That’s a much more satisfactory solution, as it means that you can make changes on iCal and have them copied across to Google Calendar.

Today I came across a slight additional problem, however.  In setting up the iCal WebDAV thingy, I had the main calendar showing up fine and then all the other calendars showing up in iCal under a folder called ‘Delegates’.  Initially I didn’t think that was going to be a problem, but when I opened up iSync it couldn’t find those delegate calendars.  Poo.

The solution (yes, here it is, eventually) was to subscribe to those other calendars using the first method above.  That makes the calendars visible to iSync, and while it doubles up the entries in iCal you can untick them so they don’t show up.  Changes you make to those calendars either on Google Calendar or iCal will be saved, and those changes filter through to the subscribed versions on iCal, which can be picked up and copied across to my phone via iSync.

In case you’re wondering about the phone end, yes it is possible to create events on the phone, but it’s a little cumbersome.  If I create an event on my phone, when it gets synced across it gets put in an ‘Unfiled’ calendar on iCal.  I then have to manually move each of those events into a Google Calendar WebDAV calendar so that it’s visible elsewhere.  Not ideal, but it works.

Unfortunately I just can’t justify buying myself a new phone, since my Motorola L6 does actually work fine.  So rather than get depressed about the situation I decided to have another go at revitalising my phone and getting the most out of it.  A little research got me Opera Mini 4.2, which is a sleek and feature-filled web browser for my phone.  Not only is it infinitely nicer to look at and use than the built-in one, it’s also miles faster thanks to a proxy compression that Opera provides – basically every web page my phone requests is sent via the Opear server, compressed until it’s tiny and then sent to my phone, which speeds up download times considerably.  The result is that my phone is now capable of checking e-mails and looking at web pages without a century passing between pages.

Then I started downloading yet more stuff.  I came across some cool Java games, which were promptly uploaded to my phone and installed.  Not all of them work, and those that do have to be very lightweight ones because my phone doesn’t exactly have much processing power – animation is debatable really, and 3D stuff is complete out.  But I’ve found a few really addictive games in there, including one with a grid of various shaped pipe pieces that have to be rotated so that they all connect up – simple, but I just can’t put it down.

During my surfing around looking for further ways to enhance my mobile experience I stumbled across ModMyMoto, a web site dedicated to Motorola users who want to make their handsets do more than they were originally designed to.  There are games and software that can be downloaded, but then there are more in-depth mods like changing the skins and core functionality of the phone.  I decided I’d have a go at installing a skin, as there were a couple of tutorials on the forum that made it all look very simple.  They had comments like “it’s as easy as that!!!”, “and that’s it!!”, “and you’re done!!!”.  I should have paid more attention.  Superfluous and over-zealous use of exclamation marks in a technical document can only be there to cover up how potentially difficult it actually is.

So I downloaded a piece of software onto my PC, which would be what I’d use to ‘mod’ the phone.  Then I needed to install the drivers for the phone so that it could find it.  One of the drivers Windows managed to find all on its own, which was nice, but baulked at the others.  That meant registering on a Motorola developers’ forum and downloading yet more software, pretending that I was a software developer.  That came with the drivers I needed, and once that was all set up I could run the modding program to start applying the skin I’d downloaded.  First of all I had to copy a whole load of files across (gif images, to be used by the skin).  No problem.  Then I had to go to the “seam editor” part of the program and set a particular ‘bit’ in the phone’s internal coding to allow it to use custom themes.  Again, no problem there.  I turned the phone off and on again, and hey presto! the skin was installed.

And my goodness was it awful.  It did look vaguely like the screenshot, but it wasn’t anywhere near as satisfying as I was expecting, it flickered annoyingly, and was impossible to read.  That was when I read the line at the very bottom of the tutorial I’d been following, saying that if I’d backed up a particular file from the phone then I could re-upload that to set it back to its default skin.  That would have been fine if the tutorial had told me that the file needed backing up before I overwrote it.   Not good.  A little further searching around showed that the only safe way to get the original theme back was to do a master reset.  Which I did.  And lost all my phone numbers, ringtones, photos and settings in the process.

Fortunately, getting the phone back to normal has been fairly straightforward, thanks to a quick iSync to transfer my calendar and most of my address book across (though, curiously, some phone numbers were not transferred across, for no apparent reason and with no pattern to explain it).  I’ve still lost the photos I took on the phone, though that it’s a huge loss as I didn’t use it very often anyway.  Still, it’s been several hours that I would have been able to use elsewhere, all thanks to a tutorial not telling me some key information until right at the end, almost as an aside.

So, let that be a lesson to you (and me).  If you’re ever tempted to ‘mod’ your phone, make sure you’ve got everything backed up, even if they don’t tell you explicitly that you’ll need to.  And don’t trust any article that says “it’s as simple as that!!”.  Trust me, the exclamation marks are a bad omen.

I also have an old Palm m125 which I’ve been carrying around with me to act as my diary, syncing it to my Mac when I remember to.  It does the job, just about, despite being older than the PC (it would have been new in 2001).  I say it does the job, actually it’s been throwing tantrums just lately, refusing to switch on and then losing everything in memory and thus any changes I’ve made since the last sync.

Then there’s my mobile phone, a Motorola L6.  Granted, it’s nowhere near as old as the aforementioned relics, but I did buy it back in 2006, so it’s a few years older than your average mobile.  I still reckon it’s got at least another year of use in it though, despite the paint coming off the bottom, a dodgy battery connection (sort of fixed by stuffing some paper between the battery and the cover) and a dead camera.

Anyway, the point of all this is that I’ve been looking at laptops this afternoon.  My poor old PC really does need replacing, and a laptop would actually be useful now.  I’ve steered clear of them in recent years, simply because I’m not mobile enough to warrant having one, but now it may serve a purpose.  There are occasions when being able to take a laptop to meetings with clients would be an advantage.  So it would be a case of combining the need for a new computer to test web sites on with the ability to take stuff to meetings.  I’d need something cheap, small, able to run Vista, XP and Linux.  Vista is important for future-proofing, allowing me to continue supporting stuff in years to come, while XP is needed so I can continue to test sites in IE6 (although I have found some software that emulates IE6 that works in Vista).

The Palm will probably be taken out of service before too long, though hopefully replaced by my mobile phone rather than another palm-top organiser.  All I really need is my diary synced to a device I can carry around with me, and if I get a Bluetooth dongle I can do that with my L6.

Of course, then there’s the question of what I do with the old technology.  I’m not even entertaining the idea of just throwing it away, far too much goes to landfill as it is.  Thankfully I’ve found several organisations that will take at least some of my relics away for either recycling or reuse.  My PC can be reconditioned and resold, as can the two CRT monitors gathering dust in the study, and hopefully some of the other bits and pieces can go the same way.  Only a small amount would need disposing of, like my old Epson printer which can’t be fixed.

So, that’s the way the future’s looking for me – out with the old and in with the new.  Although, knowing me, it’ll probably happen in reverse order.  Still, it’s a good plan, especially given that we’re planning on moving house in a few months’ time – the less junk we have to transport the better.

EDIT: I have now purchased a new laptop!  Yay!  Should be here within 5 working days.  It’s nothing too fancy, more for business than anything else, but should give me everything I need.  It comes with Vista, which is important from a support point of view, and I’ve discovered that I can run IE6 on Ubuntu via the Wine emulator, so hopefully that should mean I don’t need to install XP as well – which is good because licensing restrictions mean I can’t install the version I’ve already got.  No doubt I’ll post an update once the laptop arrives and let you all know what I think of Vista.