Breathing Space

With two months to go before my next upgrade becomes due, I have been looking at phones. My current model is the Nokia N95. This was launched as a top of the range smart phone that has everything. The top model came with a phenomenal 8 Gb of memory. Two years down the line, and it has become a little stale.

The range of phones available now yet again demonstrates leaps in the technology. A mere ten years ago the phones were just phones.

Then came diaries & calendars and cell-phone cameras began making their appearance on the top models soon after.

The phone that had everything only two years ago has become quite ordinary. Even much less expensive phones now outdo the 8 gb memory.

Looking at one of the less expensive options, the Nokia 5800 Music Express is quite fabulous.

Spending only a few minutes playing with the phone was enough to make this one of my preferred options.
The screen is a beautiful 3.2” providing plenty of space for a qwerty keyboard, fabulous games and a range of other options. A navigator option on the phone should be available soon. The music express comes with GPS (every phone seems to have this now) but the navigator version comes with a windscreen mount and a full navigator licence unlike the music express’s 1 year licence.

As its name implies, the 5800 is a good phone for listening to music. The N95 had quite good sound for a cell-phone at the time, but the sound on the 5800 is far superior. It sounds almost like music, and is quite handy to provide entertainment when needed.

The touch screen is great and really easy to use. Earlier touch screen phones suffered from the tiny keys on the key pad. You had to use the stylus to use the key pad. Here, the keys are large and easy to use.

The handwriting recognition works quite well, but takes a little time to get used to. Certainly something that I could live with. The keypad could become an optional extra.

My main criticism is the size of the phone.

The i-phone is a beautiful piece of work. The screen is large but the phone is very much slimmer than the 5800. Unfortunately, my network provider does not include the i-phone as one of the contract options.

The slim phones appeal to me. Samsung has quite a history of producing ultra slim phones, but these hardly seem to last the two years until the next upgrade becomes due.

Over the next few months many more phones will be taking their place on the market. One of these is the Sony Ericsson Satio. For someone that uses a cell-phone camera daily, this comes with a 12.1 megapixel camera. The screen is a massive 3.5” and the phone can be used for TV & video.

At this stage the amount of memory is unknown to me, but with many phones offering 32 Gb memory as standard, this may not be a problem.

Perhaps my ideal phone would be one that doubles up as a mini computer. One that allows me to edit my documents and use for writing would be ideal.

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