I'd avoid the first version because I told myself it wasn't 3G. When the 3G version came out the contract on my trusty E61 had long passed its sell by so I really had no excuse.

Overall I like it. Perfect? Not by a long way.

The best handheld computing device available right now. For me, yes.

The best mobile phone? That category doesn't exist. The world is far more complex than that.

After about a week I realised that what I was using was a 21st century Palm. It's icon drive, single tasking (for all intents and purposes) and has a touch screen. I loved my Palm V & Sony Clié but lack of phone and the insistence on sticking with a stick out arial for the one with a phone meant it languished in the cupboard long ago. By the time a decent phone/palm came out I was working with Symbian devices so tried those. You know, I really wish the iPhone had the extra programmable hard keys along the bottom. Give me a touchscreen keyboard over graffiti anytime. It would be nice if companies like Textware Solutions could replace the standard key layout with their own though.

Ignore much of the negative stuff out being bandied around the webosphere. Compared to any Series 60 phone I've ever had the iPhone just works. Switching between 3G and wifi works like it should. The screen quality and size instantly blows you away. Only a 2MP camera? Just how big a photo are you going to email or web upload over a 3G link?

Would I like a bigger camera, more memory, better battery life? Of course. But I also want simple sync with iTunes, easy app install, a great email client and oh, that screen.

But is this really the best way to help phone users navigate around pages larger than the screen? On my Nokia E61 the thumbnail looks relatively clear. On a Motorola L7 I can just about identify the screen areas (Left menu, middle content etc), but if I visit an unfamiliar Website the thumbnail doesn't help me find the information I'm looking for at all. As for vertically and horizontally scrolling the L7's tiny viewpoint around a large web page on the L7; the horror, the horror.

So what happens when I turn it off. I'm left with a smartly rendered page with no assistance to help me navigate around. Is this better than using the built in browser and a content adaptation service such as the one launched by Vodafone recently? As I say its rendered very well, it scrolls faster than built in browser (at least on a phone like the L7) and it probably uses less data traffic; but I don't think this is enough to crack the mass market. I'm sure the mobile geek community will rave over it, but I think that the big breakthrough in presenting normal Web pages on restricted phones is still to come. Maybe Opera Mini v5.

The upgrade process unfortunately lost the default 3 theme. A well design theme that worked well. I'll have to try some others again. The other unfortunate side affect was that the ? have / swapped over. Annoying, but I can live with it. The upgrade has fixed some of the problems I'd noticed before.

• The Services Browser works with the 3 today page. The Internet page of this usually (but not always) displays with lots of broken image links.
• The Gmail contacts screen is no longer keypad only.

Further details can be found at E-Series

Series 60 Messaging. Is it really two years since I last used a Series 60? The email client in the Messaging application seems to have hardly changed. Its support of IMAP and POP3 is adequate and the one line display summary is fine. However in use its short comings quickly become apparent. There's no intelligence in there. The header or whole message approach just doesn't cut it. Auto-retrieval sort of works, but I've had it retrieve deleted messages, old read messages appear as "new" and the worst is when it just stops retrieving. The font size when displaying messages is too large too.

Mail for Exchange. All the E61 blogs recommend this client. It integrates well with the phone and does a reasonable job of intelligent content fetching. But, and its a big but, it only works with Exchange. Sure Mail2Web is free, but its not my company's email provider. I don't want to and can't forward all my work email to an external mailbox. My experience with M4Exchange indicated that the auto-fetch was heavy on battery life. The phone died in about half a day. I did like its peak and off-peak settings for auto retrieval. If you use Exchange or don't mind creating yet another email account, Mail For Exchnage is worth a look. However, for me its unusable.

Profimail. Another application that seems to have hardly changed in two years. Its problem used to be with coping with large amounts of mail or many IMAP folders. I don't want all my mail on my phone, but I do want access to it. Downloading my current mail used up my trial before I got to find out if its IMAP handling had improved since I last used it. The colour scheme is an acquired taste.

Movamail. A Java based mail application that was simple to install and configure and was happily retrieving my IMAP based mail very quickly. Everything is done via MovaMails own server so they can compress the mail before sending it. I imagine that the client app is kept small too by not having to have inbuilt POP3 or IMAP support. This server centric approach does have a down side. If I'm out of coverage when I start the app - no mail. Rather than a standard menu system Movamail uses a very attractive dialog driven approach. Unfortunately the attention paid to the presentation of these is not carried through to the program where the inbox view is particularly poor. In use it presents headers and retrieves an initial mail fragment well. I find it annoying to be constantly asked whether I wanted more text or entries to be retrieved on scrolling - just do it for heavens sake. One of the risks of the Java approach is integration with the phone. For instance, new mail doesn't appear on the standby screen and I cant choose a sound from the phone. MovaMail does at least read email address from my Contacts. I just did it wrong. I couldn't find away of editing its mistakes either. I finally gave up with MovaMail when it crashed during mail retrieval.

Update:In retrospect, I'm not comfortable with a client app taking login data and storing it (and copies of my email) on a remote server without a clear warning and my explicit agreement.

GMail. At last a phone that the GMail app installed on and worked. My first impression was good being presented with an attractive, clean and easy to use UI. Rapid header retrieval, automatic fetching of messages and entries as I scrolled all worked well. The GMail app doesn't try to download all my email yet it does let me search all of it. It seems to read my phone contacts too. Its primary weakness is that it unsurprisingly it only works GMail. It also doesn't do rich formatting of email contents (which mobile client does?) and has a maximum size of email that you can read annoyingly truncating it at that point. Its other weaknesses: no auto retrieval, no IMAP support and always displaying URLs as links through the Google transcoder. I'll definately continue using this application to read my GMail, but not my work email.

Update: There is one other problem with the GMail client on the E61. On contact search only the numeric pad works making search useless if you have more than 30 or 40 people. Luckily I dont initiate much mail via GMail and rely on Reply.

Three Mail. I'm fairly sure that Three's mail package is based on Seven's Personal Edition. This application relies on a deskyop connector running on my PC. I have two problems with this. Firstly, I want a mobile mail solution. I don't want to have to rely on my PC being turned on when I'm not at home. If I'm away for a short period of time I expect the machine to sleep. If I'm away for longer I'll turn it off. The second problem is that I have a Mac and cant find a redirector for it. End of trial.

So after many downloads and installs I'm using the standard Series 60 Messaging app for for my work email. Its really not very good, but the opposition isn't either. All I want is:

• My recent or selected emails on my phone (efficient memory use)
• Search access to the rest
• Fast, reliable and battery efficient auto-retrieve
• Efficient use of the large amount of screen real estate
• IMAP support
• Attachment download
• No PC Desktop connector!

Blackberry really doesn't have anything to worry about if this is the best the smartphone developer community can do.

I finally decided to change contracts and get a new phone. I chose a Nokia E61. Sacrificing a camera, the screen and keyboard will hopefully give me a highly mobile computer as well as a phone. First impressions are highly favorable. The screen is excellent, Wifi was easy to set up and the keyboard is very usable. The phone is not without its faults, most of which are already well documented around the web.

The biggest single fault with my experiences with the E61 must lie with Three. There is clearly a well know bug that prevents either of the phone's Web Browsers from accessing the Three's Planet3 services. If you don't know better then your internet experience miht end there. Several people have returned their phones at this point. Rumour has it that the flash upgrade of the E61 fixes this, but the Nokia Software updater refuses to update Three E61s. However, when I downloaded Opera for Mobile I could access the Today page (just) and through this discovered the URL for the Internet service home page (http://mobile.three.co.uk/sdf/internethome). Once I had the URL for this then I could reach it from either of the other browsers.

Playing with the E61 this weekend has given me quite an insight into the development of phone sotware over the last two years and I'll be posting my thoughts and experiences with a number of applications over the coming days.

For a number of reasons I was looking forward to trying the Gmail app. Unfortunately, so far I have been unable to do so. My first attempt with a Motorola SLVR first failed when entering the download URL the browser failed to display the page at http://gmail.com/app. This isn't uncommon with the SLVR and trying again the next day did show the page containing the download link. Download and install completed without hitch and I entered my username and password. I was asked if I wanted to connect to the data network, select yes and waited. The next message to be displayed was that the network was unavailable and I required a data connection to use the program. I have a data connection, I just downloaded the app and haven't moved. Returning to the browser surfing worked fine. Handset 1 failed.

Onto handset 2 - a Samsung SGH-D600. Download and install seemed to work well, as did startup and account info entry. Then something magical happened. My phone reset itself. This isn't a one off, it does it everytime I try to sign-in with the app. In my naivety I thought that Java ran in a sandbox and couldn't affect the device. How wrong I was.

As an early adopter and part-time geek, I gave the app more time and attention than many would. So I have no Gmail midlet to try - I don't know how it compares to browser access. Don't get me wrong. I don't blame Google one iota for this. There are too many phones and too many firmware release to truly test an app before it gets to the customer. I still wouldn't want to be in a company that relies on client applications for its revenue.

A small game where players buy and sell goods on ships sailing from Alexandria to Carthage. The cards are both the goods, the currency and the means for moving the ships. As goods are bought the ships move along the trading route. When one or more arrives a Carthage all players sell the goods they own that arrive while those on board the other ships may be at risk to pirates. There's a nice balance to the decision making in this game between taking a card as money or buying goods which also moves the ships and may trigger the pirates. However, the production levels on this game were more like those of a prototype.

A mad game where players are divided between two soccer teams. Each team appoints one coach with the remaining players taking ownership of the team members. Each turn the coach draws a formation card. The coach's job is to shout the soccer players names and gesticulate at the players to try and get them to position the team members in to formation shown on the card. Then they can soot for goal. The catch is that the coach must not use verbal directions other than pass and shoot. The name of the game sums up the play pretty well. We had a very enjoyable and hectic 20 minutes playing this.

A tile placing and route building game where the players compete in running coach tours. At all times in the game each player has one tourist route card telling you the length of the journey and the places the tourists want to go. Your job is to build new roads, upgrade existing ones (in a manner similar to 18xx style railway track building) and place these destinations so that you earn the most money when you operate the coach tour. Once complete you get a new (and longer tour). This would be relatively simple affair if it wasn't for the fact that Green Town is so named because of its trees that the tourists come to see. As you develop the town the trees get pushed out to the more remote parts of the region making it harder and harder to include them on the tour.

Each player is a member of one of two secret societies who, together must collect a set of objects. The catch is no one knows who else is in their secret society and the objects are distributed around each players hands. When one player knows who is with him and that between them they have met their objective then they may declare the game over. If they are right then all members of that society win. Cards are exchanged through duelling and trading. This is a nice variant on deduction games with only a small memory element and lots of opportunities for player involvement and interaction.

One of the big hits of the show. At its core Space Dealer is a relatively straightforward manufacturing and trading game. But it has a unique twist. Well unique for a boardgame. It adds a realtime element to the standard mix. Building stuff takes time. Travel takes time. Real time, as indicated by the sand timer you place on the object when you start it. It is an element that computer games have had for years, but applying it to a boardgame is a neat idea. I know Tamsk used sandtimers and time, but as an abstract game it doesn't reach the same players as a game like Space Dealer. Not only do in game activities take time, the game finishes after exactly 30 minutes. I have some reservations about this game - sand-timers work well but a knocked table can cause havoc; because everything is simultaneous the game is much more open to mistakes and cheating; you can't pause a sand-timer to ask a rules question - but the basic concept is inspired.

2006 has seen me rediscover role-playing. Away from the mass market D20 products an independent press has grown producing interesting and varied games generically known as Indie RPGs. Project Odyssee round the back of Hall 6 (a hall full of a variety of fantasy games and LARP'ers) were doing a great job demo-ing a wide selection of games from this community. I enjoyed a couple of demos and finally bagged a copy of Ron Edwards' Sorceror.

Unlike many of my fellow gamers I go to play new games, meet old friends and total strangers rather than come back with a suitcase full of games. I dragged my weary brain away from the fair on the Sunday with three games, 1 rulebook and a graphic novel. If you've never been you have to go - there really is nothing else like it.

So last week I forgot to record an episode of The Shield. The best series of the best show on TV and I didn't want to miss it. iTMS US has The Shield for sale. but due to archaic distribution and licensing agreements Apple can only sell these in the US. Since I live in the UK, I'm not allowed to register on the US iTMS. If you've ever tried you get blocked when you need to enter details of a credit card issued in the US.

A quick web search and I discovered what many people probably already know but I'll share anyway, there's a loop hole - iTunes Gift Cards. Buy a US gift card from an online supplier, get a friend in the US to buy one or stock up on holiday. Once you have the PIN you can then register on the US store without a credit card.

The result was that I happily bought and downloaded my missed episode. Now, do I buy the rest of the series and skip needing to wait a week for the next episode?

The pitch is that using a program on their phone a user can scan one of these squiggles and with a single click connect to the web page or other resource on their camera phone. Isn't it simpler and quicker to ask the user to send an SMS with a shortcode?

Most of the target customer base understands shortcodes and knows how to text. Alternatively they can download and run a Java program that might or might not work on a given handset. On first use I imagine most folks would give up before even getting the midlet on their phone. On subsequent use I bet an SMS is still quicker to send.

There aren't even many adverts that use shortcodes so I can't imagine how small the potential market for these tags is.

If the functionality was built into the phone and camera software then maybe it would work, but until then give me shortcodes.

Fixed now.