[Gllug] Choosing a new mobile phone

[Alan Peery]

I am looking at a similar upgrade the phone project--and some of our 
research overlaps.

On Sun, Nov 04, 2007 at 02:40:47PM +0000, damion.yates at gmail.com wrote:
> 
> I've since worked out that this is locked for all non business users.
> If you get a business O2 contract you'll get 1/2Mb/sec which is fine
> (albeit 1/3rd of the speed "3" provide).
Thanks, very useful to know that if I were to pick O2 instead of 3, 
which is looking best right now.  Partly this is because I've seen 
reports that 3 tend to lock down TCP ports less often, and partly 
costs per minute & megabyte in the contracts.  The primary worry is 
the coverage, because 3's towers cover less of the UK--and I think
that the failover they have to other networks is only for 2G levels
of service.

Their x-series charging model and "mobile broadband" both appear 
to be price leaders. Skype and TruMobile look like moneysavers, 
and slingbox back to my PVR sounds very fun if the signal on
the train is good enough.


> The N95 is a great phone, the GPS will eat your battery like nobodies
> business though.  The N95 8GB due shortly, is a sexy black, with
> bigger screen and an estimated double battery life, due to much
> improved OS power savings and a generally upped mAh rating.
It's out now, but in the UK there are only two ways to get one.  
You can sign up for a contract with Vodaphone, or buy one outright
so it is not network linked and put your own SIM in it.  On
www.expansys.com the price is running £709 with no contract.  The 
Vodaphone contract is exclusive until Christmas.

The biggest thing that is making me want to get the 8Gb version is 
the additional RAM in the phone.  Evidently the RAM in the 
original version is tight, with various reports of 15-21 Mb left 
free after booking the phone.  The 80+ Mb free in the 8Gb version
allows you to surf the biggest web pages and multitask apps like 
the music player at the same time.  Another reason is I plan
on doing a lot of IMAPS mail reading on the device, and some 
of the folders on my mail server have tens of thousands of 
emails.  I'll need to have at least enough RAM free to have 
the message index in memory... I do wish there was a version
that didn't have the 8Gb flash built-in, so you could select
the flexibility of SDHC cards. 



The E61 & E61i are also tempting. I believe the E61 is affected
by the same RAM limitations as the 95, but I've not had a 
chance to check how much RAM the E61i model has.  It is also 
available unlocked--for a much more reasonable £279.


Alan
--
Alan Peery
peery at io.com

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