Mobile phone V Laptop PDF & Email & Form Filling

tonytee

Hope you experts out there can help me.

I need a phone good enough to do the following with ease and speed, I can spend whatever it takes.

Need a phone that can send a PDF file, about 8 A4 pages via email, hopefully without much hassle.

Before that, I also need to go onto a certain website and fill in the various fields which will all come together and make that PDF. Then I just ask the client what their email is and send it there and then. This is preferable to having to go home and then filling in the form from a desktop and then sending the PDF.

Currently I have a notebook, 1GB, its slow and I havent tried the formfilling on there but I know it will be slow. Also I will have to walk around the property with a notebook as opposed to a mobile phone.

I have a sim only 30 day contract with orange, 750 mins plus 100 text which I will either upgrade or change to a better deal. It was the best deal going when I first got it, now its not so that will be changed anyway.

I will buy the phone from eBay probably, brand new.

I have been told the Blackberry 9700 is the best for email but can it send PDF. Will be using the phone for this type of work for around 4 hours per day max.

On a side note, what is push email? I have been reading up but need a simple explanantion.

Hope someone can help.

Regards,

devizes18193

If it was me doing it I would play with as many key boards as you can Although I've never had a blackberry I had 2 phones with push email a nokia e63 and the sony x10 .The nokia is a bkack berry rip off . great functions dictionary and spell checker . The x10 has more gage then you can throw a stick at and is a touch screen beauty . How ever the keyboard sucks , me, iam 6ft and have clod hopper fingers when it comes to typing and the x10 is a touch screen. In my case as i do not use it that much its not an issue but its a example of what im saying . Push email is always on and when some one sends a email it will come through to the phone instantly .

tonytee

Which phone can send PDF files through email?

Thanks.

bubblesmoney

i have the htc desire phone. regarding your queries about filling forms and sending pdf documents....

i can fill forms from the desire easily. i can send and receive by email documents. i have tried pdf and excel files forwarding and receiving via the phone and reading the documents. i havent tried editing them. the documents to go app (free) allows documents to be read. the gmail app also reads the documents. i havent tried editing the documents in gmail. but will try this and update here. i havent tried creating a pdf on the phone though (you can do that by buying the documents to go app paid version and might be able to do it for free on gmail documents sectionb, i havent tried that feature yet), but you seem to suggest that the website you access creates the pdf, so i dont see why you cant attach it to an email. i hope others have used such a facility can confirm this feature for you.

also available as an app is a facility to use your phone camera as a portable document scanner which has a facility to use multiple photos to be combined and sent as a pdf document.

battery life isnt that great, which i am told is a common feature of all smart phones, so you will need a car charger.

the browser allows you to have 4 windows so you can sign into multiple email accounst simultaeneously and always leave them on if you wish. these 4 windows are separate from the gmail app which accesses your gmail account.

plus loads more features which are covered in the other threads on the desire on this forum.

ps: i dropped plans on buying a netbook after buying the desire and using it the last 15days. you can buy extra memory card upto 32gb for the phone so that should be enough memory for work use

tonytee

Thanks for the reply.

Yes the website creates a PDF for me after I have inputted the required information. I dont need to edit the PDF once created, I just need to attach and email it. The reason I am asking is that my current phone is very basic and I was thinking of getting a better one. AT the moment I have a phone, netbook and a camera so was thinking that one phone could do all of the required tasks that I want.

There's a fair bit of form filling although most is yes or no. The PDF will contain text (but not much) only and be around 8 pages, no actual photos though.

Is there any other phones anyone can recommend or is probably the best phone for the job?

Alternatively is a PDA the better option? WOuld it be quick because that is what I want! How will the PDA connect to the internet and would the PDA be useable for a phone aswell?

Thanks very much!

bubblesmoney

tonytee wrote: »

Thanks for the reply.

Yes the website creates a PDF for me after I have inputted the required information. I dont need to edit the PDF once created, I just need to attach and email it. The reason I am asking is that my current phone is very basic and I was thinking of getting a better one. AT the moment I have a phone, netbook and a camera so was thinking that one phone could do all of the required tasks that I want.

There's a fair bit of form filling although most is yes or no. The PDF will contain text (but not much) only and be around 8 pages, no actual photos though.

Is there any other phones anyone can recommend or is probably the best phone for the job?

Alternatively is a PDA the better option? WOuld it be quick because that is what I want! How will the PDA connect to the internet and would the PDA be useable for a phone aswell?

Thanks very much!

i can take photos or videos and send them to facebook or by email etc from the desire phone

similarly i can receive documents (pdf and excel are the ones i have tried) and also have forwarded documents from one email account to another via the app and also the browser.

various scan to pdf apps can be used to create PDFs from any photos that you take and the app can be found on the market place, although i myself havent used these apps but will download it once i have more space on my phone following the froyo update for htc desire expected on 23 june http://www.t3.com/news/htc-desire-froyo-update-23-june?=45731 which will supposedly make the phone 2-5 times faster :eek::j depending on what task it is doing.

form filling shouldnt be a prob on any of todays smart phones. the desire can do true multitasking, can have 4 browser windows open plus gmail app, plus various tasks can be done together. you can just long press the home button and last 6 used programs popup in a window and can use any of them.

the desire supports exchange and pop email which your employer might be using as many businesses use that.

i dropped plans on buying a netbook after using the desire and i dont use my camera much now as have the desire. the videos are good too for a phone. it has a reasonable 5 megapixel camera with autofocus. but dont expect a cracking camera as it a phone afterall.

buying a PDA now would be a waste of money in these days of smart phones. my old PDA is rotting somewhere the last few years as i dont have much use for it.

my archos 605 media player wont be of much use now too as i have the desire now and will buy the 32gb micro sdhc card probably soon.

i probably wont be using my tomtom 703T gps much now as well as the google satnav is great from the occassions i have used it both in town and villages and motorways in unfamiliar locations in journeys lasting a couple of hours.

i dont need a fm radio as it has got one too.

i dont need an organiser too as the desire has a good one.

i dont need to see the news for the weather as it has a great weather app. and news app.

i dont need to carry connecting cable as i can transfer files by wifi / bluetooth.

what ever else i dont need i certainly will need the car charger and car holder and as a backup carry the mains charger as well incase i use the phone a lot! if you are used to a basic phone then you will find the battery life shocking but am told most smartphones are like that now a days! see good videos on how the phone works on http://www.geekanoids.co.uk/reviews/tag/htc see all the videos on the desire on this website and see comparisons with iphone etc available on youtube and decide which one suits your needs.

you also dont need a separate cable for tethering as it allows wireless tethering of other devices, so you wont need internet dongles for laptop or MiFi devices for wireless hotspots etc. by the way there are apps available (WeFi) for automatically selecting free WiFi signals for data usage to cut down on your costs.

it is not all work, there are enough of other apps for non work use too. see the geekanoid and youtube videos and cnet uk reviews of the phone and also on techradar

gjchester

You posted this in the Out and about phone thread too...


Thinking about it in steps..

Log in / Fill in forms. - Easy all smart phones can do this, with niggling issues.

The only restriction is probably on how much typing you have to do, and the layout of the form.
Lots of typing and you really want to consider a "proper" keyboard, secondly an onscreen keyboard, last txt type entry. If it's just tick boxes a touch screen phone would be best.
Layout is important, you don't want to be scrolling all over the screen all the time. Typically a form designed for a PC will be lousy on a phone simply as the screen is smaller.

Create the PDF and mail it. Given you said you don't need to read it theres little point downlaoding it to the phone. I'd be looking at the website mailing it for you to save your data allowance. Otherwise you'll be downloading and uploading a few MB per PDF. Not a problem if you do a few a week, could be if you start to do 10 a day. Bear in mind phones can be slow to downlaod / upload so it could take a while to do it.

Being perfectly honest you may be better with a laptop or tablet type device with a 3G modem in it. If you have to do a lot of typing forget the phone idea, it's OK for a small note or two, but I'd be hesitant to use it to write a long email. We've been down a tablet PC route at work, and ended up going back to laptops because the end users hated "typing" with a stylus on a screen and the constant scrolling back and forth due to smaller screen resolution.

It really does depend on the complexity of the form and how much and what type of data you need to enter.

daggy

This may be of use....

Kind of a hybrid

bubblesmoney

The dell as of now has poor software 1.6 Android. Plus 256ram etc. Plus it is 5" and nearly 250 grams so will be unwieldy for a phone.