Hello Nokia 6806 and TMobile HotSpot @Home

After watching my Treo 650 looping restart all morning, I’ve decided to leave it ¹ and move to a very utilitarian Nokia 6086.

Things I dislike about the Nokia:

• Flip phone. I’m just not a big fan.
• Display is much less attractive than the Treo’s.
• Only 500 slots in the Contacts list (I had to clean out my Address Book).
• Clumbsy and ill-organized menu system, pointless ‘my shortcuts’ menu.
• Mute isn’t a button on the keypad.
• Need to clear messages (’Battery Full’, etc) before it recognizes keypad entry

Things I like quite a bit about the Nokia

• Uses Apple’s iSync thanks to a small hack from shadowmoon ². Even with Missing Sync, the Treo’s syncing was unreliable.
• BluePhoneElite2 support. Neither Treo or iPhone have this to any useful manner.
• Calls over WiFi.
• It’s a disposable phone that I can’t wait to dispose of.

Dave Winer’s review-at-one-month confirms I made the right decision not picking up an iPhone.

“Because the iPhone doesn’t have a search command, and apparently doesn’t store messages locally, it makes a poor choice for a mobile email client. “

LATER:
I just added a synchronization command to my regular backup script. Feels like tech working for me, not me playing with tech. A good feeling.

UPDATE 31 July 2007:
My number has been ported to the new Nokia. Yea! So far, with my little playing around, it works as expected. I’m actually finding I can dial much faster and more reliably from the Nokia keypad than I ever could from the Treo. I’ll miss Chatter - but I think I’ll get over it.

1. And unless something very interesting happens, Palm for good.
2. As simple as it looks, I hosed my system the first time I did it. Had to restart in Safe Mode and wait through an fsck to get back to normal. No fun. Second time, no problems.

UPDATE 21 August 2007:
I’m happy for 2 things:

1. The Nokia moves so seamlessly and actively between the wifi and TMobile networks. Even sitting right next to my router, the phone is constantly bouncing back and forth.
2. Call initiated on the wifi network that move to the TMobile network don’t go against my minutes.

UPDATE 26 November 2007
This Nokia is turning out to be a pretty horrible phone. Mute & loudspeaker, my two most used functions during conference calls, are a pain to access - even when the screen doesn’t fall asleep and go black during a call. While dialing is faster than the Treo, it’s still cumbersome - using this keypad for text messages makes me cringe. And needing to clear every message the phone wants to tell me before I can tell it to do something isn’t right. Plus, I’ve gotten lost enough to justify hiring a full-time guide, let alone a magical device w/ Google Maps on it.

As I suspected, T-Mobile has added more phones to the WiFi lineup - namely a. Blackberry Curve. Attractive, but I’m not sure if I want to go back to Missing Sync.

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