For Liars and Loafers, Cellphones Offer an Alibi

[Sunder]

One phone I'd like to recommend against is the SideKick.  I've no idea if 
it's got a GPS receiver or not - likely it doesn't need one since it's 
GPRS and can use tower timing as discussed before.

I'm recommending against it, because while I love the phone and its 
features, it's too big brotherish.  Example: if you write an email while 
it's out of range of a cell tower, and hit send, it will store the email 
into the Send folder.  If you then try to delete that email from the Send 
folder it will give you an error saying "I can't do this right now because 
I need to first synchronize with the server."

Which means even emails you want to erase will be first sent to the 
server!

It does have an ssh client, a web browser, and an AIM client, but I use
these with caution, especially the SSH client.

It's also got a USB 2.0 plug and an IR transceiver, but I've not been able 
to make any use of either, nor seen any options to enable/disable them.  
For all I know the IRDA could always on and will talk to anyone, etc.


You don't "own" anything on this phone despite the appearance to the
contrary.


I was also considering Palm phones, but Palm OS is piss poor at memory
protection so any application can clobber/read/spy on any other, so if 
there's spyware in the code that talks to cell towers, you're at its 
mercy, and it can read anything you've got in it.