Waiting for E70

After much deliberation and discussions with friends and thorough research, I decided to change my current cellphone. In my friend Manish Joshi's words, "My aim is to use a single device". This makes perfect sense to me. I do not want to carry a mobile phone, an iPod a digital camera and laptop most of the time. I want one digital Jeeves that will help me do most of my work while on the go.

So my first choice was Samsung BlackJack. They had an exclusive deal with Cingular and it looked pretty attractive, sleek and bright. It has a camera, full QUERTY keyboard, quad-band, office documents and PDF viewers etc etc. I almost bought it. But then I started thinking about what else I want in one device. I must say, Nokia's website especially Nokia India's website was a great help in my decision making process. Once on their site, I decided what I wanted in a phone and I made my list. My preferences were,

• A full QUERTY keyboard
• GSM International Phone Tri or Quad band
• Camera
• Office editors not only viewers
• Wi-fi enabled. This was important. I will explain in a bit.
• Music Player
• Bluetooth
• Extensible memory slot
• HTML web browser
  

BlackJack and a lot of other phones including TMobile Dash, had most of these capabilities, but they lacked one or the other feature e.g. Wi-fi or Office doc editors. So if I have to browse internet using these phones, I would have to use GPRS or EDGE. This is not bad and considering that BJ is a 3G phone, it must be pretty fast. But this will require me to buy a data package from my service provider. Unlimited data package would put a hole of additional 40 dollars approx. in my pocket. Instead, if I have wi-fi, I can simple use this phone in a wireless hot spot and I am set to browse the Internet. As far as office documents are concerned, I could only view them or not at all on some phones. I wanted the ability to edit the office documents as well.

Now TMoble MDA has wi-fi and office suite and also Windows Mobile, but it was not unlocked phone to the best of my knowledge. The E70 that I have ordered is unlocked. So that gives me freedom to use it in different countries. Also MDA has 1.3 MP camera, E70 has 2.0 MP.

So finally I decided to splurge some money and bought myself this holiday gift. It has not arrived yet. But I cannot simply contain my excitement. I got a cool deal and I hope that my phone will will prove its mattle. I am going to call it my digital Jeeves.

I would surely write my review of this phone once I get is started. Till then... I pray that my phone arrives on time. Cheers!