I'm about to get a new job (unrelated to programming) where there's a lot of downtime. I'd like to get a mobile phone that I can stealthfully use to do some web development on. Basically editing and uploading php files.
Can anybody reccomend an phone suited to this purpose?
A phone for webdev? Wowsers.
The least I could even begin to consider is a netbook on 3g, wifi or tethered to a phone's 3g.
Why not a netbook - e.g., Acer Aspire One, or HP 2133, or Asus EeePC?
As for phones, you could install a VNC client and work on your home PC, or you need a phone with a high resolution screen, text editor and FTP/SCP client, or a phone with a SSH client to connect to your server, where you can use nano/vi directly.
I suppose the iPhone can be used. Otherwise HTCs phones. You could code your own Java-program for it. T-Mobile's G1 with Google Android might be an option..
Edit: Many HTC-phones have keyboards, which are almost essential if you want to do a lot of typing on them.
Personally, I would get a Sprint BB so that I can benefit from their superior bandwidth. Attach the phone as modem, or just get a datacard. Then merely connect to your home machine via rdp using a non-work connection thus not using their resources.
Additionally, you could download available apps to run on the blackberry to go the route you indicated.
If you are seriously considering using a phone for editing files, you should get one that has a keyboard. Without knowing who your cell provider is (or if you can switch), it's impossible to make a reasonable suggestion.
Blackberry will work for this, I have used my curve for this frequently. What I do is use the ssh client (cost about 100 dollars for the good one), and work from my linux box using screeen. Another benefit is the curve takes micro sd cards so I have 8 gig of storage to work with on the phone directly, so you can do editing, store content and upload later if you want.
iPhone 3G + Text Guru + One of the many SSH apps
Future release of Text Guru will have FTP built in. But it's a very solid editor as is (with HTML preview support).