Quote:
Originally Posted by nurseshelly
Another thought if you are somewhere that there is free wifi around ... you could get a cheap first gen kindle fire and root it
When I had my first gen kindle (not the fire) which was 3G I did experiment with the web browser and sending emails. It was pretty slow, but it did work. You could also browse some web sites, but it was a very basic browser. Not
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I'll totally agree, it's not much fun to browse with it, even moving around the page is a pain in the butt because youre using the arrow key to move about 2 character widths at a time and a page formatted to not wrap nicely is a nightmare. However for the purposes of sending emails for homeless people (or those who cannot afford $7/month Tracfone) it's great - communicate a bus/train schedule, send emergency messages, weather warnings (going to be cold tonight be sure you are at the shelter in time else call me if you cant get in), updates (bus is held up from a breakdown, we will be 30 minutes late). If you only care about the functional it works. It's not for writing long stories, fan fiction, and political diatribes.
For the android angle, i'm trying to get them also set up with a deactivated Tracfone smartphone. The android ones always have full wifi ability as well, they have a faster browser (though a tiny display and on screen keyboard obviously) but moving around a poorly designed page is easier with the touchscreen plus the pinch-big and pinch-small function. This also lets them use 911 if they have to which works even on deactivated phones, and when can be afforded can reactivate the phone with a card from walmart, from friends online who have the phone's ID through the web, and I think through another phone if you have the tracfone's card number. So the friend can send an emergency email to someone willing to buy them a $10-20 activation card if there is something serious going on without needing the phone activated outside emergencies. Properly set up the tracfones can even run android apps with some minor hacks on an external SD card. It's worth saying this is all theoretical/someone else told me this is possible but I haven't had a chance to set anything up like this yet. (still the internet idiot but learning how to do this soon I hope)
But a deactivated Tracfone smartphone is still useless for email without wifi. The kindle provides a little entertainment of things to read, or mp3's to listen to, plus "browsing/email anywhere" when the coffee shop is closed or turns off the router late at night. That's the system i'm trying to set up for others i'm doing it for and why. And yes a working IM client would dramatically help - though I made another specific post on that already.