It’s that time of the year when I am nearing the end of my current contract with Vodafone UK, and I need to start thinking about an upgrade of my handset.
I’m currently sporting one of Nokia’s all time greatest hits, that never really made it into the mainstream, known as the N82. Most people were put off initially by the house brick styling, and the rather small chicklet keys. This unfortunately meant that it was often overlooked when sat next to the bad boy N95 8GB or sleek 6220 Classic.
However, these two off-putting traits, actually became some of the N82′s best qualities.
It may have looked like house brick, but my god is it made like one too. You could quite easily stack a large number of these up in a box configuration, and before you know it be paying council tax on it. This phone has been dropped numerous times, trodden on, sat on, got wet, got hot but still it soldiers on without so much as missing a beat.
The rather odd looking keyboard, is actually another strong point of the device. With great tactile feedback, and good spacing between the keys, it’s one of the best T9 layouts Nokia has done in recent years.
It’s getting on for 18 months old, yet still the BP-6MT battery will give me 2 days normal usage, and the GPS will lock in 2 seconds flat.
It is truely astounding. This phone has been all over the world with me, and has never let me down.
Well, you may say, why change it?
Well, the screen is getting rather scratched, due to sitting in my pocket with keys and coins, and S60 5th Edition is where Nokia is pointing all their new services.
So, what do I get?
Well, unfortunately, Vodafone doesn’t have a great choice of handsets when it comes to Nokia. The N97 is the obvious upgrade path, but the N97 has had less than a perfect start to it’s life by being mainly crippled with buggy early release firmware.
However, with V20 firmware for the N97 almost upon us, I think the N97 is actually starting to become the decent device it always wanted to be. Mark over at The Nokia Blog brought us a great preview of the upcoming V20, which seems to address quite a lot of the issues people are having, along with adding some really nice looking features. Steve over at All About Symbian is even warming to the N97, and thinks that many of it’s irritations could well be addressed by the update. Steve also gives some good advice, on how to make an N97 experience a whole lot more rewarding.
The N97 also kind of makes sense when it comes to price. What I mean by this, is that it is still fetching a good return when sold 2nd hand on eBay and the like. This means that should I get it and hate it after a month, I can always sell, and move to something like the E72 which is due out next month.
The eight days and counting until my upgrade date are just long enough to change my mind. But should I?
