Monthly Archive for November, 2006

Nokia E62: Sixty-second thoughts.

Published
by
Benjy
on Wednesday November 29, 2006
in Cell Phones and Nokia
. Closed

In the time I was India with the E62, I had a lot of time to have second thoughts about it and ultimately decide to return the phone upon my return. At least two people I know have also returned the phone, and one of them reported that the Cingular sales representative bemoaned the number of these phones coming back. Now I don't know everyone else's reasons, but here are mine:

  1. Cingular refused to unlock the phone until I'd owned it for 90 days, despite my longstanding status as a customer. Returning the phone allowed me to get out of my contract, and will allow me to take on another two year contract later if I want some exclusive phone or discount in the future
  2. Cingular broke Java on the device, requiring java applications (such as Google Maps Mobile and Gmail Mobile) to ask for permission before every single network access. It's this kind of brain-dead behavior that leaves me uncertain that I'm ever going to want another Cingular branded (or even carrier tainted) device.
  3. That unremappable voice recorder button on the side is not only something I'll never use, but it was way too easy to press accidentally. I made more than a few accidental recordings.
  4. And though I saw a lot of other people complaining about it, "sluggishness" wasn't actually a reason I returned it until I played with an LG CU500 and a Samsung Blackjack later. Hell, even my 3 year old 3650 which I've defaulted back to the for moment sometimes feels faster than the E62 did.
  5. And not actually a reason that I returned it, but one of my friends did something to the network settings that caused both the WAP browser and the XHTML browser to crash on launch, and he couldn't figure out how to fix the problem. Not exactly the kind of robustness I'm looking for.

While in India, I went through the whole list of available and upcoming Nokia Series 60 devices, looking to see if any of them would meet my needs. The E50, E61, N73, N75, N80, and N95 all have variations on problems including no/wrong HSPDA, no camera, no wifi, moving parts (slider / flip phone), expensive, a littler bigger than I'd like, not out yet, etc. But I had a lot of time to think about it, and on no fewer than three occasions I decided that an unlocked Nokia E61 was the best phone for me for now: It'll solve my number 1 and 2 Cingular issues and keep me out of contract, and I'll get a wifi device out of it, all for only $380 (I ordered it in early November; the price on Amazon has since gone up to $450).

But then my officemate went and exchanged his E62 for a Samsung Blackjack, and I'm not really sure how I feel about having my blind Nokia devotion swayed by a Windows Mobile device. But it's tiny and sexy, and it has US HSPDA, a camera, and a scroll wheel. My only complaints are the lack of wifi and the less than stellar battery life. And to pick a nit, the lack of the full range of world frequencies that the Cingular 8525 tank features.

Oh, and Windows Mobile, of course.

3 minute review: iPod Nano 2G (8GB, black)

Published
by
Benjy
on Monday November 27, 2006
in Apple, Reviews and iPod
. Closed
iPod Nano 2G (8GB, black)

It's hard to believe (and a little embarrassing to admit), but at this point, I've gone through six iPods. The very first one, a 20 GB, a 60 GB that died on me, a short lived iPod mini which was quickly returned (due to the mini lacking a album line on the "now playing" screen), a 60 GB color, and now a 2G 8GB black iPod Nano; And so far, this is easily my favorite iPod yet:

It has an awesome form factor, the battery life is amazing, it holds as much music as I actually need (for awhile I was obsessed with being able to fit all of my music onto the device, but I've long since blown past that being a possibility and have learned to make do), and I basically have no complaints that would actally stop me from recommending the device.

A couple of comments:

While I was excited about the included "search" feature when I read about it, in practice I have never used it. On the other hand, I find the displaying of the current letter you're viewing when you're scrolling to be super useful (even with only 8 gigs) and I don't know how I lived without it before.

Not about the iPod in particular and I'll skip on the details, but the new iTunes interfaces fix a number of my long-standing issues with some of the configuration interfaces, even if a few of the annoying behaviors when plugging in an iPod remain.

And the battery life is simply amazing. I only charged it twice during my entire three weeks in India -- and one of those was right before I left for the plane trip.

However, there are two features that they've broke since previous versions of the iPod that I would like to see fixed:

1. It's no longer possible to turn on/off the backlight by holding down the menu button. I don't like the backlight on all the time, and I want to easily turn it on when I need it.

2. It's no longer possible to add anything *except* an individual song to the on-the-go-playlist. Not being able to add an album or an artist pretty much completely neuters the on-the-go functionality for my purposes.

But you know, bugs happen. I'm sure they'll be fixed.

4 minutes.