(I've been wanting to try doing "three minute reviews" as a writing exercise for awhile now, and this was my first attempt. Unfortunately, this review took about 6 minutes to write plus about 4 minutes of editing. And for the record, I'm posting this via the new phone's internet connection.)
In under an hour yesterday, I went from knowing the Nokia E62 was available from the Cingular store to having signed a new two year contract with Cingular and replacing my trusty Nokia 3650 with an E62. I've been hanging onto my Nokia 3650 for way too long, and I figured "Hey, what better time to change a fairly major component of my daily routine than 4 days before I leave for three weeks in India?"
The main thing that made this decision was the desire to have a fast unlocked phone while I'm in India for internet purposes, since data plans over there appear to be ridiculously cheap.
12 hours later, I'm not really regretting the decision, and it's nice to finally have a modern Cingular plan (rather than my in-limbo ATT wireless cingular plan). I like the big screen, I like the snappiness compared to the 3650, I like that it already works with iSync with a few hacks, I like having unlimited internet both on my phone and on my laptop via bluetooth, I *really* like the new KHTML based web browser, and I even like the size and form-factor and qwerty keypad (remember, my baseline wasn't the smallest phone in the world).
However, I do have a few small nits to pick with the phone so far:
- Cingular apparently chose to neuter the ability of Java applications to talk freely to the network; So, for example, when I'm using google maps for mobile, it currently endlessly asks me for permission to talk to the network. This is apparently Cingular's fault, and their effort to exort more money from application developers by forcing them to get Cingular to sign their applications for free network access.
- While I like the keypad so far -- the buttons are very nice to press, and I like the pointer better than I thought I would -- I am pretty annoyed at the moment by the inability to generate a number by holding down one of the number/letter keys when in text entry mode (as you could on old series 60 nokia devices). Instead, you apparently have to use the meta-shift button to get numbers when in text entry mode.
Other than that, I'm pretty happy with the device. Sure, I'll be wanting a device with a camera, wifi, and faster UMTS data probably within a year, but I've already been waiting a year and a half for my dream device, and in the meantime, this made for a pretty significant upgrade from my trusty 3650 (And it was cheap! $99 with 2 year contract and rebate).