Here were my requirements:
1. Better camera phone than 2MP
2. Wifi
3. Ability to edit text files
4. Pass my touch test
Although I had my heart (and budget) set on the e65 or the N80, after an intimate touching session with the e61i, it was love at first touch. Sure the buttons were a bit yummy and I have to keep my nails short now, but it has brought me so much delight since I bought my first camera phone that I have to sing some accolades.
But first, I must tell why I didn’t get the former 2. The e65 is no more than a wifi-enabled version of my 6280. It felt too familiar. While the N80, aside from being out of stock and still highly priced, had way too many duds for me to risk getting one and ruining my birthday. I also convinced myself that the N95, with its delicious Carl Zeiss lens and 3.2MP body, despite its very much close to perfection status would just piss me off with its battery problems.
So I decided to drop the first requirement and get the e61i.
First I will grumble.
1. Gummy Keyboard - Yes the keyboard is gummy. Hitting it repeatedly did not soften the keypad, at least not after one week. Plus, I had to keep my nails short otherwise the buttons simply would not depress. Nursing baby and trying to type an SMS had me shifting the phone around my hand several times. And it took me 48 hours to get used to typing with a qwerty keyboard.
2. Weak Wifi - It had been complained elsewhere about the wifi connection being shifty and you having to select the operator each time you access a new program. It is true. The wifi receptor is also as strong as my cat, so what my laptop can pick up, the phone’s signal drops in and out or doesn’t detect anything at all.
3. Loading Miss Daisy - The loading of programs is also as slow as old Miss Daisy driving. I have to wait one heartbeat, then two, and then a few more before something loads. Sometimes I get annoyed and press the button a few times more and it gets angry and hangs or goes to the settings mode or claims it has no more memory. This phone is teaching me patience. Even more efficiently than my little tyke.
4. Dumb Settings - Some of the phone’s settings are simply illogical. And it makes so little sense because they had been perfectly tuned in the earlier Nokias like my old 6280, which was as cool as a phone can get - pity about the no wifi. Perhaps it was a design and space issue.
Okay that’s all the bad.
Here’s the good.
1. Expanded Vision - Thanks to the huge screen, you see so much more. It is like having an iPod or one of them media players on hand. The image viewer that comes with the phone suffices as a viewer - scrolling is fast enough - but it does lack an editing function that I sorely craved for.
2. Wifi Way - Having been deprived of free Internet, being able to surf wirelessly using my own connection without using the expensive 3G is sheer pleasure. A must for just about everyone who wants to get connected.
3. That Gummy Keyboard - Despite it having tiny keys and being gummy, I still type faster on it than on a regular phone. I managed to edit my 3000 word (ok, half of it) story using QuickWord, which is the other plus.
4. Office Functions - Yep, you can open and edit Word and Excel files here and even read PDFs, something the e65 can’t. It can only open them.
All in all, it is a good buy and the stuff I can do now with it has made my world a definitely funner place.
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