SoonR Organizer

I love trying to see what my T-Mobile phone with its basic internet (aka T-Zones) package can do. As you may know, I don’t have a data plan…a data plan on a Razr would be overkill, I think. (Time for an MDA, perhaps?) I was interested in Soonr, a remote access client that lets you access your PC from a mobile phone with a data plan. Data plan? Ha! I forged ahead anyway.

Soonr’s key selling point was that there was no software that had to be installed on the phone, just the PC. I downloaded the desktop client and installed it on my computer. Going through the setup wizard, I got a weird bug - an error message box -  but hey, this is a beta, and there was still an "OK" button to click, so I clicked it and all was well. I had configured some folders to share, and these were easily accessible from the Soonr website, which I logged onto from my laptop in the living room. Accessing Soonr from my phone was another story…

For the record, it’s probably not a good idea to drop the phone on a tile floor before testing its functionality, but, after putting the battery back in, the phone still worked, so I decided to go ahead and try using Soonr. Also, if they say you need a data plan, you probably do, so I wasn’t expecting this to work at all. However, surprisingly enough, I could log in to Soonr.com from the phone and see my folders and files. I couldn’t open most of the files, since my Razr has no idea what a ".xls" or ".doc" file is, but I could view a ".bmp" easily. I tried to email a file with the link provided, but I got a message that the Data Server was not available. This seems to be a message from T-Mobile - I’ve seen it before when I lose a signal. Granted, my house isn’t in the best coverage area, but the phone works inside for making and receiving calls. I guess data is a little trickier. Combined with a half-charged battery, these were probably not ideal testing conditions…I’ll have to try again from somewhere else.

Overall, even the minimal functionality of Soonr on my phone was exciting to see. However, without a true handheld with a data plan, I have limited patience for navigating the net this way. The time it takes pages to load seems an eternity and "packet data temporarily unavaiable" messages abound. The only web service I’ve really been able to use on the phone is the mobile Gmail page, and believe me, I’ve used it.

I suppose since I don’t have a handheld with a data plan, this wasn’t meant to be, but it was a fun experiment. Anyone else using Soonr? What do you think?

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