Talking, Pictures

The day before we left on the cruise, I received my new phone, the one I've been lusting over since it was announced: the Motorola V710. Bluetooth wireless. Color screens, inside and out. TransFlash memory card slot. Speakerphone. Camera.

I've been railing against camera phones since I first saw them, deriding them as useless toys. I've had mine almost two weeks, and I still think the camera part is a pretty useless — but admittedly fun — toy. Having seen other people's uses for camera phones, Dan now claims he needs to look through my phone each evening to see what I've been up to.

Last night, I discovered another fun feature: voice dialing. This isn't the "record a name in advance" of my old phone — oh, no. This thing does speech recognition, and it talks back. It lets me say the name of anyone in my phone book, which it then reads back to me to confirm, and then asks me to choose the correct number to dial (mobile, work, home, etc.). Of course, it insists on pronouncing "Jorge" as the Americanized "George," but I think that can be forgiven in the grander scheme of things.

We like new toys.

By the way: iSync rocks at moving a full phonebook into a new phone.