Hi guys. I want to have a way for our customers to text us information without having to use personal smartphones. Sometimes they will be sending drawings and/or pictures, so I'd like a pretty large format. But I'd also like to be able to take phone calls with it, so if our internet goes down or there's a power outage, it provides another way to talk to people when we can't use our usual phone system. Problem is, even though it's not not it's primary function, talking into tablets is pretty awkward. Any thoughts about whether to go with a large format phone (6.9" or so screen) versus 11 or 13 inch tablet?
My vote would be favorite phone + useful-size tablet, rather than one device that doesn't do either function well. I use my iPad all the time, but its by no means a direct replacement for my phone, and vice versa.
nderwater said:
My vote would be favorite phone + useful-size tablet, rather than one device that doesn't do either function well. I use my iPad all the time, but its by no means a direct replacement for my phone, and vice versa.
Yeah, probably better to bill it as a text line only, and if/when our phone lines go down, we can use it as a backup.
My phone has a 6.9" screen, it's large enough that I can comfortably read e-books on it although I don't know how well it would work with drawings...before I retired and was working with drawings all day, I hated looking at them on a computer monitor where I couldn't see the whole thing at full scale. Any phone is going to be kind of like looking through a keyhole to see a portion of the drawing. The flip side (no pun intended) of a larger phone is it's more difficult to stash in your pocket.
Seems like a perfect use case for a foldable:
The problem is, they ain't cheap.
Would a tablet with bluetooth earbuds alleviate the "holding a sheet of plywood up to my ear" aspect of phone calls? Having done construction site visits on phones and tablets, drawings are a lot easier to see on a tablet.
I don't like tablets, but that's because I don't have a good use case for them. The screen is too small to be as functional as a laptop, but too large to be a phone.
The foldable phones are really cool, and it might be what you need. It is other-worldly technology, those folding screens; and they are, I think, totally manageable in size. Being thicker doesn't seem to make it harder to fit into your pocket like having a much larger un-foldable screen would. We're not in the first generation of foldables, either, so it's not so new that we haven't run into the unforeseen issues like dirt ingress.
On the other hand, I love my Samsung Galaxy S22 Ultra. It comes with a pen, has a great camera, and is just large enough to be a useable almost-substitute for a laptop for most of my mobile needs.
There are a few phones that have a desktop UI when you plug them into a monitor. Samsung Dex is on most of their S-series phones and tablets, and works pretty well. You can make calls easily. You can use a monitor, flagrantly large TV or even projector, then just yank the cord out and have a phone.
So I went and bought an 11-inch Apple tablet today. My logic is that I hardly ever expect to use it as a phone, so a tablet made more sense, and the 11 inch seemed like the right mix of portability and ease of viewing. Apple, because even though it costs more, most of my customers have I-phones, and there's less chance of cross-platform texting issues. The only thing kinda annoying is that Apple uses the heic format for pictures, but that shouldn't be too tough to deal with.
What a nightmare. I set the tablet up, everything is working fine, then it won't send or receive texts. I spend 2 hours on the line with apple tech support. They can't figure it out. Interestingly, AT&T can send me text messages, but they are the only ones who can. Now Apple is saying that I need a new e-sim... I just don't know, but I sure wish that I had an in-house tech guy, because I've got a lot better things to do than this nonsense. Ironically, the whole point of having a dedicated text line is as a productivity tool for my customers and staff. So far it's been the opposite of productive. Grrr.
