My Current Phone

My job/life is mobile phones, so I have just about everything cross my desk. Some upcoming models I’m looking forward to are Nokia’s N97, E75 and HTC’s Touch Pro. I’ll say up front that I think most phones are crap though the iPhone is sadly the sole exception. With that said though, I don’t use an iPhone as my “real” phone, I use an E71. You may notice there are no RIM devices listed here - I don’t use them and generally don’t like them. They made the UE decision to go with menu/back buttons versus the entire rest of the industry and dual soft keys and I never got on board with that - and their devices are just boring (but they are hands down the best at EMail).

I have an iPhone, Android G1, Omnia, Diamond, Diamond2, Treo Pro, Xperia X1, and even a 5800, so I have basically every new/top cell phone from every manufacturer. Here are a few of my thoughts on these handsets:

• iPhone (Apple) - probably the best combination of software and hardware of any mobile phone on the market. That said - its just too “Fisher Price” for me and typing on that keyboard is a joke. I know I could train myself to type on it but I just don’t want to. It’s a great little computer with all its apps and what not, but to me its not a great phone and I tote it around in my bag but it only gets used to try out some app someone asked me about.
• Android G1 (HTC) - not bad, but considering we’ve been hearing about Android for years and this is the best example of it, not too good. The cupcake ROM looks to solve a lot of its “unfinished”ness but this phone is just like every other one of Google’s products - a Beta. And if their other products are any indicator - a perpetual Beta. This phone literally feels like a group of Google engineers made it. This one rides around in my bag next to my iPhone but this one is rarely even ever turned on.
• Omnia (Samsung) - I had really high hopes for this WinMo phone from Samsung when I got it. At almost $600 I expected great things. This phone would be good if it was $49.99, that’s about it. It’s way too slow, the Flash-based TouchWiz thing gets old and useless after about 3 minutes. The touch-cursor mouse thing I’m sure will be on several upcoming devices but its not good - just give me a good ‘ol D-Pad and be done with it.
• Diamond (HTC) - Gorgeous little phone, fantastic display. HTC’s TouchFlo is pretty good though extremely awkward to use. However, this phone has no keyboard, at all, and the screen is so physically small that any on-screen keyboard requires you to use a stylus. This phone is completely and utterly useless for me.
• Diamond2 (HTC) - Improvement over the Diamond, but I only have beta ROMs in this currently. It is now shipping so I’ll follow up when I have a chance to load some production ROMs into these.
• Treo Pro (Palm by HTC) - This phone could have been great for me, but Palm had to go and muck around with WinMo and add their crappy Palm ways to it. Its built by HTC like most WinMo phones it seems and its not a bad every day phone. Its kind of cheapy plastic but because of that you wouldn’t mind beating it up day-to-day. Its 320×320 screen is great for content and its omnipresent keyboard is a great throwback to the old Palms. However, you can’t turn it off - like the old Palms and it has a couple of other qwerks unique to it (vs standard WinMo) that were just terrible design decisions.
• Xperia X1 (SonyEricsson by HTC) - This phone at least has a nice little keyboard on it. The screen is good too and physically HTC did a good job putting this phone together. It feels solid. The new “Panels” software should just get a do-over. Other than all that though, its probably the best WinMo phone I’ve had come across my desk. The reality is though, that this phone is like a warm-up for HTC for its new Touch-Pro, which will have a slide-out keyboard similar to the X1. I think that phone will be the best WinMo phone going when it hits the streets.
• 5800 (Nokia) - This is Nokia’s first touch-screen device and marks the Beta release of the Symbian S60 5th edition OS. This phone is the little engine that can. It makes terrible decisions with the new touch interface from S60 but despite all that, its just kind of fun to use. It’s virtual keyboard fills the whole screen in landscape mode and typing on it is pretty straightforward. I think “power” users will hate it, but I think “average” users will like it just fine. That’s not exactly prognosticating because I know Nokia has already sold 1 million of them at least.

The phone I use day-to-day is the Nokia E71. I actually have both the US and European versions of this handset. Honestly, this is the best phone Nokia has produced to date and I love it. It is their best combination of size, materials, weight, and function. I love the QWERTY keyboard and overall the phone is great. HOWEVER, after using it now for many months it is somehow unstable running Nokia’s Mail For Exchange client. You would think it would be a bullet proof email phone and actually come pre-bundled with MFE but it doesn’t. It’s Nokia’s closest matching handset to anything from RIM IMO and it does a decent job, but it won’t convert any RIM lovers that’s for sure. One oddity - the Euro version actually has the ‘(’ and ‘)’ characters on the physical keypad. On the US version, these are missing and you have to dig around for them in the software symbol table. Now someone please explain to me why a character that is so often used when texting emoticons is not on the physical keyboard? Most users probably can’t even find the software symbol table. It’s rediculous really.

Other recent phones include:

• Nokia E51 - I like this phone except the keypad is horrible. Now one would naturally ask… “why would the keypad on a mobile phone be horrible, since the main function of the device is to press keys to use it?” That, my friends, is a damn good question.
• 6120 Classic - Love this little phone. I still have a couple lying around to toss my SIM into if I need to take a small rugged phone with me that does everything I need and I don’t have to worry if anything happens to it.
• Nokia N95 - Not bad, but its like a swiss army knife - 32 functions but no single one is particularly good at what its for.
• 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