Mobile Phone thread - please include links to good deals

[JP]

I received my new mobile yesterday and have been looking into getting rid of my old one.

It's a SE W900i and works fine but has quite a few scratches on it due to being dropped a couple of times.

Looking online I found some phone recycling sites including Fonebank & Mazumamobile who are offering nearly ?60 for the phone if it's working OK.

Has anybody used these companies before or any other like them? Can anybody confirm that these companies are safe as it all seems a little too good to be true to me.

[J0e Musashi]

I've just recieved a text message from my girl, who is in Ghana, and it all in unreadable symbols. It's all random letters and shapes. The only thing I can make out is a . Is there anyway I can get the text to read in English? I don't understand why it's happened as she is using my O2 k800i with a Ghanaian SIM, and all other texts I've recieved have been in English.

[JP]

She should be able to change the language the SIM uses in the options. Not sure if you can do anything though.

[Pavey]

Whats the consensus on Blackberry's (Blackberries?) ?

I got mine the other day as a free upgrade (Curve 8310) but had to send it back as it kept rebooting itself during calls, and until i read this thread was just going to get it replaced for the same.

I love the way it syncs with Apple mail is the main pull for me, but the E51 looks well snazzy aswell.

[J0e Musashi]

Blackberry=Huge phone bill mucker

[gizmo1990]

Ok you Nokia E51 owners, I have some questions!

This phone seems to have passed me by. On first looks tho it seems a very capable phone BUT seeing the 'series 60' os makes me wince.. I bought a n73 (series 60 eek!) over a year ago and I've since come to the conclusion that its not very good at all, at least for me.

By this I mean that the OS is painfully painfully slow. And the phone feels like a brick in size terms. I've decided that what I desire most in a mobile is a speedy speedy speedy interface, a slim design and as many extra features as possible. And when I mean speedy I mean when I click the 'write text message' button I want the text page to appear almost instantaneously, like the good ol days of mobile phones. In fact like the Nokia 6300 (series 40) I bought my girlfriend for Xmas.

So.. in the opinion of E51 owners here does the phone meet my criteria? Most importantly just 'how' fast is its os now?

[Mr_Skinny]

Have you tried updating the firmware? My N95 was fairly slow when I first got it but with the latest firmware it flies.

[Pavey]

Blackberry=Huge phone bill mucker

Why's that Daryl? Do you mean i'll make more calls?

Im down as a T-Mobile employee so everything is half price, it will cost me an extra ?7.50 a month for all the email and net features.

[wakka]

Blackberry =/= a huge bill.

I have one on O2, it costs me £30 per month for 400 minutes and 500 texts (which I rarely exceed, only occasionally in minutes). On top of that I pay £10 for Blackberry Unlimited, which gives me 75MB of access to email and Blackberry Messenger (perfectly sufficient).

I was also given £100 to take the deal, so if anything they're bloody good value. It's certainly the most useful phone I've ever owned, I value excellent email and instant messaging far above any bells and whistles like high resolution cameras and music making games or whatever.

I own a Curve too Nicholas, and I love it. Slim, light, with a fast operating system and actually useful additional features.

[PeteJ]

Ok you Nokia E51 owners, I have some questions!

I've had the E51 since Thursday and it seems to be fast enough. Having not owned a Nokia E or N before I'm not sure how it compares, but I've yet to feel that the response time is low.

[Friction]

Ok you Nokia E51 owners, I have some questions!?

Mine should be with me this week too. Again not used a S60 series before, BUT I have had a various other Nokia's for years - current phone being a 6233 which I have had for about 18 months, so I would like to think I would notice if the E51 was slower!

[wazy15]

Just got myself a Blackberry curve and it is a great device. Slim, light and doesn't have the slow and crash orientated system (Windows Mobile 6) that made me flog the Vario 3. Make sure you download some must have applications:

Mini Opera - Best phone browser period
Jivetalk - Amazing IM Client
Google Maps

Be aware, that unless you are on Blackberry enterprise server for emails, using the default BIS email system doesn't allow proper 2 way IMAP. For example, all mail that gets delivered to my email gets delivered to my blackberry, but if I delete or view on outlook on the PC it doesn't update on the device. For that you need BES which is costly and needs to be installed on a server, or you can use GMAIL which seems to support 2 way IMAP somehow. Also, download a decent html email viewer, BBSmart is good.

BB are good devices, but RIM just need to stop capitalising on the email issue and roll out proper IMAP which every other phone on the market does. Word is that they are releasing an OS update which makes the email client capable of rendering HTML emails properly but no word on the proper IMAP 2 way sync yet.

[Roost]

Have a look into BPS (Blackberry Professional Software). All the advantages of BES but for a small group of users, plus it can be installed on the same machine as the exchange server which isn't possible with BES.

We've been supporting it at work for about the last 2 months and i setup a test rig for it the other day, very nice and easy

I've got a Curve 8310 myself and love it, luckily it's free with the job even if a left i'd be very tempted to get my own as i'm so used to Jivetalk as mentioned above, plus completely free browsing (another advantage of having BES or BPS).

[wazy15]

Yeah, the problem is though that our email and website are hosted on Linux and neither BES or BPS support that platform

[gizmo1990]

Mine should be with me this week too. Again not used a S60 series before, BUT I have had a various other Nokia's for years - current phone being a 6233 which I have had for about 18 months, so I would like to think I would notice if the E51 was slower!

Thanks for the replies guys.

Let me know how it goes Friction. I'm really interested in hearing how people think this device is gui speed wise.

btw, I have updated my n73 and its still very very slow, compared to s40 based phones at least.