Aaargh, mobiles. :(

I’m not doing well with mobile phones lately.

 

After my Samsung SGH-A501 started eating batteries, I decided it was time to trade up to a nice Samsung SGH-A801.  They’re not a bad phone – slim, light, good keyboard.  The slider form factor is OK too, but they have a major downside – they are a dust and lint magnet due to the mechanism, which sucks if they live in your pocket like mine does.  The proprietary connectors for everything are also a drag, but the camera is quite nice.  It also pissed me off that I couldn’t remap the softkeys.  Bloody telco branding.

 

After living happily with the A801 for about 6 months I was bitten by the bug to be able to do mobile e-mail, preferably via WiFi to minimise painful telco data costs.  Enter an iMate JasJam, which I promptly upgraded to Windows Mobile 6 and the SPC MobileShell.  It sucked.  More importantly, it sucked for about 90 minutes until I gave up on it in disgust, which may be a record even for me.  The screen and keyboard were nice, but couldn’t make up for the heavy, clunky form factor, crappy actual PHONE capability (protip: iMate, if you’re gonna make a smartphone, make sure the bloody phone actually works) and general unusability.  Exit the JasJam.

 

Enter a nice Nokia E51.  Solid as a rock (albeit quite heavy), WiFi, MP3 ringtones, boring DC barrel plug charging and USB data connector… everything I wanted.  The Symbian OS is slightly quirky (you can’t kill the screensaver, and you can have the desktop shortcuts *or* the keyboard shortcuts – not both) but generally no complaints.  It lasted 48 hours before the keyboard died.   :(    I’m currently having a Paypal arbitration over that one.  Exit the E51.

 

Enter a new Nokia E71 next week…. Let’s see if I can kill another phone off in a matter of weeks.  >:|