How I was Finally Touched

I have talked here before about my struggle with my Samsung i8910 phone and how I really wasn't getting on with it, especially doing data entry via the touch screen. As a result I has concluded that I probably needed a phone with a physical keyboard. Well things have moved on.

It started when the latest third party firmware came out. I'd got to the point where I was definitely going to put the i8910 on eBay but I thought I might as well put the HX-V8 firmware on first. Which I did.

And he's done some work on the keyboard. The main change is the addition of a fourth row of keys, so numbers are no longer a shift away, they're there all the time. The other thing that happened, and I'm not sure if it's me or the keyboard, is that I succeeded in getting my thumbs into the right place. I think part of it was that I was previously worrying too much about hitting the target, so I was aiming low so I could see where I was going. Now I just jab at a key and it works. Most of the time.

That leaves one remaining problem: battery life, which still sucks, even after trying repeated full battery cycles (recommended in various places). It will barely manage a day (8am-11pm) if I actively use it, perhaps a day and a half if it's being a straight phone.

After some discussion with Those Who Know I've ordered another battery

So having committed to using the i8910 I've been pondering was to make it even more useful. We use WebCalendar on our extranet for our diaries and it doesn't work well on a tiny screen. I looked at Google Calendar for inspiration. The mobile version is very stripped down and works a treat on a small display, and the ability to write appointments using a natural language parser is a joy.

"Can't be that hard to write" I thought. And it wasn't, so we now have a front end to WebCalendar which looks very similar to Google Calendar Mobile, even down to the ability to add entries by typing things like "lunch with Phil at noon tomorrow". Cool!