Ocasta

Apart from a trusty Nokia 3650 that spends most of its time in the drawer, it is the best part of two years since I had a so called smartphone. Back in early 2005 I got a SE K700 and was seduced by small, capable phones. In a way, the K700 was the last of a breed. Since then all Sony Ericsson phones have got bigger without offing me enough reason to change. Through my work I've had access to other phones. If I was to generalise, the Samsung D-600 I've been using for most of the last twelve months is rubbish. There is so much wrong with it I wouldn't know where to start. Recently I have had a Motorola SLVR which at least looks good. Its software leads a lot to be desired.

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.