I've had my old Sony Ericsson P900 for over two years, but about a year ago I started to realise what a mistake it was. Actually it might have been a lot earlier than that, but lets be generous and give it at least a year of happy service. Since then, I've been meaning to upgrade to something more suitable.

My main beef with the thing was that the text input was crap. When using the keypad, you had the option of using a munged T9 key system, or you could use the stylus and freehand it using their input notation (which admittedly was better than Palm's at the time, but its implementation was fairly limited). I found the keypad flip to be annoying so I removed it, which made usability better. But even then, to do anything with it, like a simple sms, you needed to drive it with both hands, which is time consuming as well as inconvenient. It also had a problem where the text input system would die after about a week, requiring you to reboot the entire phone to get it to work again. Most annoying, especially when you want to do a quick sms or jot a note down.

The other issues, like the retarded calendar, to-do and contacts system, meant that I wasn't even using the phone for the purposes that I bought it for: a combined PDA and Phone. So that meant I was carrying around a bulky brick that I was only using for functionality that was available in phones a third its size.

So when Marcus upgraded his phone I thought it was high time to look into upgrading mine. I originally intended to get the Nokia 6230i (the same phone Michele has), but after seeing the Nokia 6111 that Marcus bought I decided that I did like that one better after all. After a few disappointments trying to find the phone I wanted on a plan that suited me (I figured out that the Optus ‘yes’ 35 plan with ‘talk & text’ was the best that suited me), Marcus pointed out where I can get the handset and the plan I wanted.

So far so good. I’m still getting used to the T9 text input system, and not having a brick of a phone in my pocket, but they’re coming easily. The inbuilt camera is of surprising quality too (the processing presets are way better than my Sony P72). Perhaps my only complaint is that the alarm isn’t as loud as the P900. But being able to drive the damn thing with only one hand more than makes up for it.

The thumbnail above links to a montage of all the phones I’ve had in the past (possibly not all, and possibly not in the correct order).