My Next Phone, Perhaps

Nokia's new E62 is a thing of beauty. It's a smart phone with a similar form factor the Treo and Blackberry. It comes loaded with all the right applications (including e-mail, Good client, IM clients, Office compatible apps, a superb SMS client, and more). It also multi-tasks properly, if you are in the middle of a text message when the phone rings, when you switch back to the SMS client you'll be exactly where you left off (something the Treo has yet to get right). The screen is bright and easier to read than any Palm or Windows Mobile device I have seen yet. The keyboard feels better than the Treo's, and it supports Blackberry style one-hand navigation (something the Treo and Windows devices don't do very well). There's a dedicated voice dial key, spoken caller-id, and much more. There is no camera (that's a good thing for me, I don't want a camera on my phone, I visit too many locations that won't allow camera phones on their premises). The device runs Symbian, and there is a Flash player available for it (there's an Adobe PDF reader, too). It uses mini-SD cards which I don't care for, but I can live with that. And of course, it supports Bluetooth (10 profiles), and is quad-band GSM (absolute base requirements for me).

The phone is almost perfect. Why almost? The E62 is the Cingular GSM version of what is also called the E60 and E61. The Cingular E62 version is the E61 with two significant changes: 1) WiFi has been disabled 2) 3G has been disabled. The official reason for making these changes is that this allows Cingular to keep the device cost down. But, cynic that I am, I suspect that it has a lot more to do with not wanting users to be able to run VoIP software on the device.

Still, I have to give this one a try.