In late 2006 IDA (Infocomm Development Authority) anounced the setting up the the wireless@sg system to provide islandwide wifi service, (I think free for 3 years - I believe afterwards people with mobile phones, broadband etc with local telecom companies would continue to get the service free as part of the package; google announced its plan to provide free wifi throughout San Francisco a bit earlier) and I quickly signed on, and then had to figure out how to use it. The obvious choices are:

1. Laptop - the new laptops all have wifi these days, and I have a Singtel wireless modem at home so that laptops can be used on line in any room in the place. Carrying a laptop around when you go out, however, is a hassle, even though my lightest laptop only weighs 3lb (it does not have a CD drive installed - one came with the machine for self installation if needed), but you need to put it inside a backpack, which itself weighs 3lb, and I usually have no need for a backpack to carry other things. After trying it a few times, I decided to discontinue.

2. PDA phone - Because I had just 2 voice lines for mobile phones and no 3G line, I thought had no use for PDAs  but in January 2007 I bought a Nokia e61 phone from Singtel, after reading its advertisement and found that it has wifi, meaning that I could use it for web access wherever I could use a laptop, without needing a 3G subscription. However, I found its user interface clumsy; further, at 145g it could not be carried in the short pocket, but required a waist pouch, which I kept forgetting to take with me when I went out. So soon I discontinued using that too.

However, a few months ago I found a blackberry 6320 going cheap and not requiring a data plan signup so that I could simply use it with my existing Singtel account. I found it easier to use than nokia e61

the buttons are better designed and it presents saved information better, e.g., when you attempt to dial a no., most phones just show you the digits you are inputting, but the blackberry shows below your recently dialed numbers, as soon as you press one digit, so that you could save further effort if you want one of these numbers, and when you attempt to input a URL the recently used URLs appear below; it also presents a slimmed down version of web pages that fit the width of the screen, so that you only scroll up and down, not sideways as I have to with e61. It is also unusually light, just 112 grams, so for a while I was carrying it around happily.

But soon I grew disillusioned with it too - I think because of its small battery (helping to reduce weight) its wifi interface tries to economize power, and web access goes smoothly only when the wireless@sg signal is very strong. Because it produces its own version of webpages, it often takes very long to present a page, even for simple structures like what drudgereport.com uses. Chinese pages are a problem too - you cannot set it for both simplified and complex characters, so I cannot read both mainland and taiwan/HK papers. I also found it occasionally jamming or rebooting on its own, and some times it has the weird habit of disconnecting and reconnecting for the phone signal and wifi, making it hard to assume whether you are connected, connected but not logged in, or not connected.

At the next convenient moment, I signed up for a Singtel Mio package which replaces 3 contracts: one mobile phone, one house phone (Mio uses internet phone system so in effect there is no need for a house voice connection), and one broadband plan; the signing up includes a discounted new mobile phone and I bought a Nokia e71 (trading in the e61).

This time there is no wifi problem - it has a big battery and can pick up the signal even at some distance from the hotspot antenna, e.g., in Citilink next to Marina there is a Pacific Coffee that provides free wifi (there is no need to log in, whereas wireless@sg requires a fresh log in at each hotspot every time you go there - there might be a way save the log in information as a cookie but I have not looked into this) and I can easily use the signal sitting near the escalator/watermill. (See http://sinazen.com/wideangle3). Its user interface is good too, some features better than the blackberry, some less good, but overall as easy to use. Chinese output is no problem, and there actually a key to bring up Chinese input.

Unfortunately, it weighs 130g, and though it could be carried in the shirt pocket, it weighs down the left side of my shirt noticeably, whereas the blackberry does not. I looked at other PDA phones like Motorola, Sony-Ericsson, Samsung, etc, but they are no lighter (Sony Ericsson P1i  weighs 124g for example and its keyboard is less easy to use, with one button shared for two letters - left side or right side) and they look more clunky than e71 and blackberry. So I looked for the next alternative.

3. Wifi phone: now several "ordinary" phones have wifi - Nokia N series all do, as do e51 and e66; with other manufacturers, wifi tends to be available only on selected higher end models. Among all the wifi phones, Nokia e51 seems the cheapest so I got one when another phone line qualified for a 21 month upgrade.

In appearance it is a narrow version of the e71, and in fact the user interface is almost identical, except that you dont have the qwerty keyboard and have to use the number keys for text entry; while this merely doubles the number of keystrokes, the level of concentration needed is, however, much higher, especially when typing in a password, since you cannot see what you typed - with anything else, you can check what you typed and correct any errors. While logging into yahoo and reading email is no problem, when I tried to answer an email, I gave up halfway. The small screen is actually less of a problem - just need to use the cursor a bit more than on e71 to reach a new part of a web page. If this is an issue, it wont be long before the e66, n95 etc would be cheap too; with a slide up screen (when you want to use the keyboard) occupying almost the whole front of the phone - like the iPhone - you get a screen bigger than e71.

However, at 100g the e51 is just so much easier to carry in the pocket - the N81, for example has the bigger screen, but at 140g with no qwerty keyboard, I would rather just carry the 130g e71. What I really want is a 100g, at most 110g, slide phone with large screen and qwerty keyboard. I should think it is not far off, but probably not when I go for my next phone upgrade in January 2010.

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added on 10/11/10

I now carry a Nokia e3 phone with keyboard weighing 113gm

and a samsung T380 with 13in screen weighing about 4lb in a canvas bag in my car but only occasionally take it with me into coffee shops etc; in any case, I find less need to go on line than a couple of years ago as email volume has decreased gradually since retirement.