crazybobbles

My new E61i phone and contract

Thursday, December 13th, 2007

My phone was getting old and annoying, theres a pin where the power socket is and it’s snapped off meaning I cannot charge the phone. So i decided I should get myself a new phone as well as a contract to go with it. I’ve been tempted to get a contract since I wanted to phone Alice quite a lot without wasting too much money and knew that Orange did magic numbers, meaning you can phone people you’ve assigned as your magic number for free. It’s really handy and definitely promotes communication. Looking at phones I was stuck at what to get, I eventually opted for the phone similar to Maddox’s epic e70 phone he used to compare against the iphone. I’ve been a fan of Nokia phones so it was quite push to stick with Nokia again. I already knew that there were a lot of apps that were unique to Nokia. So yeah, here’s my phone..

And instead of giving you the specs from the nokia site, here’s some things I can do with it:

• Phone people; yup! Granted I use a bluetooth adaptor for that most of the time (well when I know it’s a long call) because it’s quite a meaty phone to hold around
• Type a lot faster with the QWERTY keyboard; oh yeah, useful when blogging and writing texts to people. I really enjoy using the keyboard to type stuff and I can definitely get more words done compared to a normal numpad.
• See all my things at a glance; beauty of Nokia phones (using Symbian S60v3) is that you have a lovely standby screen which is flooded with information that I can check out at a glance, this includes the last two text messages I’ve received (and a quick preview of the texts), calendar entries (more on that), new email and text alerts, missed calls and answer message alerts, wifi scanning (says whether or not it detects wifi spots). The todo list is by far the most useful one out of them all
• Todo list; it’s becoming more and more difficult to remember stuff I need to do, having a phone to quickly enter them on a todo list saves me time remembering them as well as motivate me to do them (since it’s written and all)
• Wifi and 3g; wifi is one of those beauty features that allow mobile interneting a breeze, since I dont have a all day internet mobile package wifi is useful for me to use my phone to it’s maximum capabilities. I have quite a lot of emails coming through and when I wake up in the morning, the first thing I do isnt turn the computer on, wait for it to start up and check my mail, I just check the mail through the phone, no start up needed since it’s already on and I can read it when I head to the tube. It’s also useful when you’re visiting people and they have wifi available, I mean a laptop is cool but doing all the laptop stuff on a mobile is cooler since you don’t need to lug a laptop. But yeah, if wifi isnt available, than it’s 3g time, decent broadband like speeds so it’s all good.
• Surf the web; mm this baby can display the entire page with it’s wide screen and all. Makes more sense than portrait since it’s all narrow. I’ve got all sorts of sites to browse on including Google Reader, Twitter, Flickr, Muse board ( thanks to the new mobile skin I made), Facebook (everyone’s doing it :(), RTM, and Calendar.
• Email; nice to check emails here, it has an email button to make the process easier, I use email to send flickr images, todo items as well as blogging
• Fring; it’s an awesome app that I can use for skyping and msn’ing, they’ve recently updated their software so that msn is a lot nicer. (I’ve used the skype app for phoning people abroad, New York was an example)
• TomTom; now I know I dont drive but when people drive me it’s nice to know where I am, this isnt a necessity but there are times where I’ve found it ultra useful, including finding Nando’s.
• Syncing; not only can I sync my todo list to my outlook at home, I can also sync my google calendar onto my phone and check out events when mobile, pretty useful and makes use of the calendar display thing when I’m on the standby screen
• Notes; a nice place for me to write up my blogs, I used this a lot when I’m on the tube and then email them to myself for further updating and posting. Makes my tube journeys a lot more productive (instead of just reading the papers).
• Youtube; this app is awesome, view AND download youtube videos onto my phone, it’s fun to show people random clips
• Underground tube map app, sometimes I need that damn map
• Panorama photos; not just normal photos that all camerasphone do, this baby does pano shots, it automatically detects the edges and yeah, instant pano shots
• JoikuSpot; I can create a wifi hotspot for my laptop or someone else’s laptop, dead useful at times when I want to use internet on another pc
• Putty; featured in Maddox’s iphone article, you can make Scarlett Johannson moist!
• View PDFs; sometimes I get pdf bills I would like to check on the phone, not that important but fancy to have
• Nes emulator, tetris and solitaire games; sometimes I don’t carry my ds lite or psp (I’m spoilt :$) so it’s nice to have something to play with

So yeah, very useful phone! It’s nice to have it all packed into one! I’m not keen on having my music there however since I love an awesome chunk of hard disk space to listen to my t00ns haha.

For my contract, I got myself a dolphin £20 plan at first which had 200 txts and 70 minutes, I later on upgraded to the Racoon 25 with 100 txts and 220 minutes, not sure why but it encourages me to phone people a lot now (inn keeps assuming I’m only phoning her because I’m wasting credit). But yeah, now it puts a smile on my face when I have an excuse to phone people hehe.