My Current Phone

I’m now carrying the Nokia E51 and this phones is great! By far this is my favorite phone I’ve carried thus far. Only complaint is I hate the S60 email client. The E51 is everything the 6120 was but thinner, sturdier, and just a little better in every regard. It has wifi which I rarely use anyway but comes in handy sometimes, and I love the dedicated buttons and the means by which you can configure them to do whatever you want.

I’ve just ordered a new Nokia E71 and hive high hopes that this phone is my holy grail. It is basically the same as the E51 technically, but has a qwerty keyboard and some more software updates. As soon as it arrives I’ll post my thoughts after I’ve had a chance to shake it out. Interestingly, the E71 will also be available from AT&T, but I still prefer the unadulterated euro versions - even if I don’t get 3G very often.

I had been carrying a Nokia 6120 Classic for the past few months. This phone is close to perfect for me- its thin, light, and small. It doesn’t have North American 3G support, but I don’t miss 3G at all. It has a great processor too - faster than my N95 it replaces. It has a couple of quirks (every so often it seems to permanently mute itself and needs to be rebooted), but overall its a nice little phone, and only $250.

Before the 6120, I was carrying a Nokia N95. I know I’m supposed to love this phone - it is Nokia’s flagship model and half of Europe is carrying it but I just couldn’t get used to it. Its too big and clunky, the processor is slow, and the GPS is horrid. My biggest issue with it though is that the overall user experience is bad (in my professional opinion, of course). Nokia put every feature they have into this phone and using it feels like a 32 function Swiss Army knife. The thing about 32 function Swiss Army knives is that while they are big and impressive and fun to show off to your friends - rarely does any one function perform particularly well when you actually need it to do something. I think that sums up the N95 quite well.

Other recent phones include:

• Nokia N75 - Complete and utter crap
• Nokia N73 - The N73 is a good phone - a little thick but the sliding shutter on the camera that automatically put you into picture mode was an awesome feature.
• Nokia E60 - Good phone, but the double-density screen doesn’t buy you anything because its so small
• Nokia E62 - Great concept, terrible execution. The processor and memory were way under spec’d. I believe the E61i corrected a lot of this but I never tried it. I wish Nokia would refresh this form factor with a new device.
• Treo 650 - One of the best phones I’ve ever had, period. Palm gets UE - its a shame the company doesn’t seem to have any real leadership.

Posted by Mark January 2008