Linkstew

Nokia Mobile Codes - I was wondering what the "barcode scanner" on my new Nokia N95 was for, and this is it. I've been trying to think of a cool use for a mobile code, but I'm not really coming up with anything.

I know I said I was going to get an E61, but Amazon canceled my order and I ended up with a Nokia E50 instead. Aside from a limited ability to multitask due to memory issues, I'm very happy with it as an interim solution until I find the phone I really want.

If nothing else, I kinda missed T9 on the E61/E62, not only for it's entertaining t9onyms, but also for it's faux spell checking functionality. And speaking of t9onyms, how did Dewitt not coin "t9onym" when he wrote his classic T9 Synonyms post?

As for my next phone, who knows? I want 3G, I ideally want Series 60 3rd edition feature pack 1, and an integrated GPS would be nice. I'm pretty indifferent to the qwerty vs. keypad decision at this point. The N95 would be pretty sweet if it weren't $800 and had US 3G bands.

I decided to give the Samsung Blackjack a pass, mainly because it would have meant $500 for a Cingular tainted phone to maintain my contract-free situation. I may consider giving a Windows Mobile Blackjack like device a spin in the future, but for now I decided to stick with Nokia.

While in India I decided on getting the E61 no fewer than three times, and I've decided on the E61 at least twice more this week. The main other contender was the even cheaper and smaller E50, and it was a tough choice. In the end, the two deciding factors were the difficulty in finding a trustworthy vendor of the E50 that was definitely carrying the version with the camera, and perhaps more significantly, the the benefits of the E61's landscape screen orientation when using the bundled web browser.

That web browser issue is actually a little more significant than you may realize if you haven't used Nokia's WebKit derived browser. It deserves all the praise it's gotten, but there's a drawback with how well it renders pages: It doesn't wrap web pages to fit your screen. Even with the E61's wide screen I find myself sometimes having to scroll from left to right to read a paragraph.

My only other complaint about the browser so far is that embedded google maps crash it. It's certainly not Google's fault, but I wouldn't mind if they could code a workaround to at least avoid crashing the browser.

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.

(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).