Pleh

I’m starting to believe that, just like email clients, all cell phones suck, just some suck more than others. I don’t want too much in my cell phone besides good phone capabilities and bluetooth. It’s that last part that’s really making things tough. It seems that bluetooth is a high-end feature and one high-end feature, apparently, demands another high-end feature, which demands another… *sigh* I don’t care about the freakin’ camera. I don’t care about playing MP3s on my phone. I don’t care about ring tones. I don’t care about downloading games or surfing the web. I don’t even care much about PDA capabilites beyond being able to keep track of my contacts’ phone numbers. (And having phone book entries be by the contact and not the phone number…. Having three entries in the phone book for one person, just because they have a work, home, and mobile number is asinine.)

My wife and I have been using a Cingular Family Plan and our contract’s expired, so we’re looking to refresh our phones and indenture ourselves for another couple years. We’ve been fairly happy with the Cingular coverage in the northern Virginia area, but are far from in love with them. We’d change carriers if we knew of any that had at least as good a coverage area (here and in Arizona — where my parents live — and in Florida — where Mickey lives. (See, mom and dad, I put you ahead of Mickey. ;))) and that also offered a variety of bluetooth-enabled phones. Last I checked, the CDMA carriers (Sprint, Verizon, ???) had a pretty limited selection, if any. My “limited” I mean, “one.” This might have changed though, so I should check. In the GSM realm (Cingular, T-Mobile, ???), each provider seems to offer a crippled-handful of bluetooth phones, but, really, do I hate Cingular enough to go to T-Mobile? That’d have to be a whole lotta hate….

So, anyway, here I am, on the precipice of another two years of Cingular and the only interesting bluetooth-enabled cell phones that interest me are the Sony-Ericsson S710a, the Motorola RAZR V3, and the entry, the Nokia 6682. The swivel of the S-E is brain-damaged and just awkward, so I’m pretty sure that’s not gonna happen. The RAZR is nice and thin and a clamshell — which I really thought I wanted this time — but it’s kind of flimsy and I’ve read bad things about it, including a near-unreadable screen in the sun and that stupid contact thing I ranted about above. Now, the 6682 is quite interesting. Is that bar form-factor that I’m used to, but thought I wanted to move away from. Nokia’s got a pretty good reputation for phone functions. There’s no contact supidity as with the RAZR…. It does have way more functionality than I want and I’m going to have to pay for that extra, unneeded stuff. I’m a bit nervous about it playing with some of my bluetooth gear, such as my Palm T3 or my Thinkpad. Hmmmm… Gotta think about this, but I think the 6682 has the current lead. I want to get my hands on one and see how it feels.

(What? Proof-read? Bah! That’s for people who don’t have to get up in a few hours….)