So, as of this week I have 6 mobile phones in my ‘collection’. But I have owned exactly a dozen cell phones so far. And it all started in late ’95 or ’96 (I’m not 100% sure) when a Dutch company called Libertel started to compete with KPN (the only Dutch mobile phone provider at that time). They offered affordable rates at 0,25 (Guilders) cents a minute. So I got my first cellphone; an Alcatel HB100 or as I called it; “my litle brick”. Because that is what it looked like. It wasn’t the best phone and it had a fairly poor (NiMH) battery. So I was happy to move on in ’99 to a nice Ericsson 688. It was way better than the Alcatel, who had the nasty habit of dialing numbers on its one when I put in my blazer (because it had no keylock). The Ericsson was robust and never let me down.
Then in 2002, I got a job where I actually got a mobile phone from my employer. Back then everyone at the office had one of those dull looking Nokia’s. But I got to choose my own phone, so I choose the nice and sleek Ericsson T39; a very small phone that – to me – looked a bit like the Motorola StarTAC (way back from ’96). In private, in 2001, I moved on from the 688 to another favorite little phone of mine: a Samsung A300. That was really a little beauty: it came with two batteries (a slim one and more bulky one) and had dual screens. It was off course heavily inspired by Motorola’s revolutionary clamshell style. I gave that phone to my sister as I just had to get a real ‘smartphone’: a Sony Ericsson P800. It was my first smartphone (2002) and it was a bit disappointing. It was slow and underpowered and it used UIQ 2.0, a Symbian based OS. It was bulky, didn’t have good battery time and – quite frankly – looked something like “My First Sony” came up with, with it’s baby blue color. But it was fun and it worked well as a phone. I just hated the touch screen that was small and misaligned a lot. Dialing a number was just a mess.
Then in 2004 I could get another phone again (I always have had 2-year contracts with my mobile telco), and I opted for another smartphone. This time I decided to go with a Windows Mobile 2003 phone: a Qtec S100 from T-Mobile (aka “MDA Compact”). That opened up a whole new world. I loved that phone: I could run TomTom Navigator on it (together with an external GPS module) and it was just great fun. Except it had not enough memory (only 64mb ram) and it had a tendency to slow down and crash. I gave that phone to my sister as well.
So, in 2006 I switched it for a T-Mobile MDA Compact III aka HTC Artemis/P3300. That is a proper smartphone: with build in GPS and a way better QVGA screen than the Compact. I used for two years and traveled the US with is. In 2007 it helped me navigate through California. I even used it’s wireless LAN capabilities to surf the web in various motels and hotels. I still like it and to this day it stands on my desk in a cradle. I think I will pass it on to my sis.
Then I also own(ed) a couple of other phones. Late 2007 I bought (on a whim) a cool HTC Startrek, aka Qtek 8500. The first and (so far) only clamshell smartphone that HTC made. I actually held a pre-production model in my hands in 2006 and thought it was very nice; it is more or less a smartphone version of my Samsung A300. But, for some reason I never used the phone that much, and I thought of giving it to my girlfriend. But I ended up buying her a very nice HTC S620 (aka Excalibur) because she doesn’t like clamshell phones. I used it myself for a while and was extremely impressed with it. I has a nice shape, great keyboard and came with Windows mobile for smartphone 6.1. All in all I liked it a lot and even thought of keeping it myself.
Instead I gave it to her, and bought myself a pre-owned Sony Ericsson K800i. A a phone it is perfect: it works well, takes really nice 3.2 megapixel photo’s, but it is not a smartphone. And for that reason I have only used it a backup-phone. Too bad as it is really a very nice phone. A bit bulky, but nice.
Then in late 2008 my contract with T-Mobile expired again and it was again time to pick a new phone. Now, I like my HTC P3300, but after using the S620 I missed having a real keyboard. Using a touch screen is nice, but typing a message or dialing a number can be a pain in the neck. So I decided to get the next-gen HTC Touch Pro (aka MDA Vario IV, Raphael), with a proper (sliding) keyboard and all. This baby packs it all: memory, keyboard, GPS, UMTS (3G) etc.. It is bulky but nice. It has a bit of a temper (the TouchFlo interface sometimes just gives up on me), but so far it serves me well.
Back to Symbian
So, back to the latest addition in my Mobile life. This week the company I work for, changed from T-Mobile to Vodafone. So I no longer can use my T-Mobile MDA IV as it is still simlocked. That sucked. However I got a nice phone back: just as nice as the HTC s620; a Nokia E71. I admit that I still need to get used to the Symbian S60 3rd release, but the phone itself feelds very robust and is really a mobile office. And – I hate to admit this – even more than my MDA Vario IV. It reminds me a lot of the HTC S620 except it is shinier, heavier and thus feels more robust.
Now the Symbian interface and operation is taking me a lot longer to get used to than I thought, so I am struggling a bit with it (kind of a love-hate thing), but that is to be expected after almost 5 years of Windows Mobile. I’m sure I get better at it in a week. And on the bright side: Vodafone so far seems to have better coverage here in Holland than T-Mobile. Hmmm….
So there it is: ‘mobile me’, in a dozen phones 🙂