NEW YORK (Reuters):
NOW THAT you can keep your old phone number with any new cell phone, how do you choose which one to buy? The New TV Religion Tivo-like digital video recorders can change your life. Build your own, or check out Sony's new PSX. There are plenty of web sites to dial up advice -- depending on your level of obsession. Whether you're considering the colour-screen model with the built-in digital camera or the phone whose ringer belts out the latest Beyonce jingle, you'll find plenty of opinions, if not necessarily many easy answers. After all, "There's no perfect phone," said Howard Chui, a confessed cell phone addict who owns 20 and runs a web site on the subject. "That's why I have so many." This week, consumers were granted the right to move their telephone numbers between traditional and wireless (news web sites) phones in the top 100 U.S. markets. Consumers can also switch wireless carriers and keep their current wireless numbers. That gives you more choices -- and more questions. An estimated 2 million Web surfers have looked for answers on Chui's review-heavy HowardChui.com (http://www.howardchui.com) and its companion high-traffic message board, HowardForums.com (http://www.howard
forums.com).
On HowardChui.com, surfers can find herky-jerky videos of the 26-year-old Cana-dian caressing various hot new numbers while expressing his aesthetic appreciation of mobile devices. What he lacks in production value, he makes up for with a painter's eye for detail in mobile technology. The just-the-facts shopper can find information from a community of experts on Chui's message board, regarded in such circles as one of the most opinionated and well-informed. A quick search through its archive finds messages ranging from the high-end, highly specialised "How do I make my Sony Ericsson (news - web sites) P900 shoot videos?" to the plebian "Which T-Mobile phone should I buy?" A piece of advice: do a search before posting a question.
QUESTIONS
Chances are, nearly every question you can imagine has been answered. Twice. Chui says part of the board's value is that employees of cell phone service and hardware companies have posted insider information, all under the cloak of anonymity. Chui's message board has also been known to ace the market in wireless-industry news. Last year, one John Doe message board participant uploaded PowerPoint slides of Motorola Inc.'s 2003 lineup of new phones.
Motorola "asked me to remove it, so I just took it down," he said. "Some people were pretty ticked off... I still don't know what the best thing to do is." OBSESSIONS Few sites are as obsessive-compulsive about new phones as Philadelphia-based Mobile Burn (http://www.mobileburn.com). Where Chui's sites can take on the aura of a hacker swap meet, Mobile Burn is more like spending quality time with a bespectacled egghead who has knowledge and time to burn.
Site editor Michael Oryl has scoured the globe for new information on high-end phones. He once devoted nearly 20 text-filled Web pages to the soon-to-be-released Sony Ericsson P900, a phone that does double duty as a mini computer. Thousands of words of review are followed by high-resolution photos lovingly shot in close-up. Shoppers who like to plan well ahead can peek at the new models that grace Phone
Scoop.com's site months before they hit the market, or the media. PhoneScoop.com (http://www.
phonescoop.com) editors pride themselves on their prowess as sleuths. They sift through the U.S. Federal Communications Commis-sion (news web sites)'s web site for newly approved radio devices so you don't have to. For more far-flung locales -- and thoughts -- some cell phone afficionados prefer Trondheim, Norway-based info Sync World (http://www.info
syncworld.com), a site rich in news, short reviews and high-minded polemic.
"Will payphones end up like T-Rex?" one editorial wondered. On this site, heady thinkers wax philosophical -- and obsessive. In another editorial entitled "Mobile device misery," site editor Jorgen Sundgot asks, "Are device makers really that incompetent?" They may be, but buyers don't have to be.
