Hi all,

After a good bit of hemming and hawing, I'm about to pick up an E65. Everything I've read about it is pretty good, although there are some comments about less than great battery life.

Anyone have any reason why this union should not be made?

Key for me is the small size, coupled with Wifi.
I don't care much about:
-PDA functions beyond phonebook and the occasional datebook alarm.
-Camera
-Music
-shoe shines etc.
-full keyboard

I do like:
-Size
-VOIP potential
-Quad band
-light web capabilities
-non MS-based OS
-price

Would appreciate any comments, or suggested alternatives before I take the plunge.

Particularly if anyone is familiar with any great products from lesser know makers that might be worth a look or that might have escaped my basic searching.


Thanks a lot.

-R

I have not used the E65 myself, but I really dislike how slow the Nokia Symbian OS feels.

The SonyEricsson W960i has some of the things you say you don't need, any everything you say you do, and its not encumbered by Nokias symbian slowness.

Hey,

thanks for the input. I appreciate it.

But I'm confused. Are you saying that Nokia's version of Symbian is different than SE's or that it runs better on the Sony?

Is the slowness really a problem? Anyone have one?
I'd be annoyed if it really dragged, as that's one of the things that drives me crazy about my Razr.

Also, the Sony is only triband, and the price is a good bit higher, so I'm not sold.

But I would appreciate any other suggestions.


Thanks again,

R

Its a great phone. Small enough to be an all rounder, good web browsing, and ignore the previous poster, if you google there a no complaints about UI speed with this device.

I agree some Nokia devices can seem slow, but this is pretty snappy.

Dedicated VOIP keys also is a nice touch...

If the most recent releases have solved the UI problems that in my opinion have plagued the series 60 platform for a long time, that is great. I have been waiting for the N82 to hit the market before trying Nokia again. I used the original N series and E series phones on their release, and was simply not impressed.

The SonyEricsson is not a symbian device.

cressers suggests that UI speed is not an issue with this phone, my experience with other recent phones (N70, E60) has been that Nokia had not solved speed/responsiveness issues to my liking. If they have now, thats great.

My W960i is quad band;

* GSM 900
* GSM 1800
* GSM 1900
* UMTS 2100

The price is slightly higher, largely because the device is targeted to a feature set that had many things you did not specify as important.

The primary reason I recommend the SonyEricsson over the Nokia was the responsiveness issue I have seen in other Nokia models, so if that doesn't exist, the the E65 is going to be a fine phone.

Wirelessly posted (Nokia E61i: Mozilla/5.0 (SymbianOS/9.1; U; en-us) AppleWebKit/413 (KHTML, like Gecko) Safari/413 es61i)

I'm typing this on my E61i which is a similar phone from a software/os point of view.

I would say the e-series phones are Nokia's fastest Symbian devices - if not the fastest Symbian devices on the market. However, keep in mind that these devices are not BlackBerry-fast, although I find them to be faster than their Wondows Mobile-counterparts.

Based on your requirements, I think the E65 is a good choice.

OK, again, thanks for the input.

Since last posting, I have googled and in fact found that there are several forums in which people complain about this slowness. There is a lot of talk of hoping for a firmware upgrade, but none on the horizon from Nokia.


Unfortunately, it's still the only thing that seems to do it for me.

(Not sure where I got that the Sony was Symbian, but it still is quad-band in the 3G sense of the word, not GSM quad-band, so it's still not ideal for my US At&t account @ 850mhz)

Just in composing this, I've jumped around and I'm reading more and more user complaints now.

Not sure what to do...

I didn't want the pda format, but maybe the E61i is a better choice. They seem to have put out firmware upgrades for that one and I'm not seeing the same complaints about it.

Yes it is.

It is just a different flavor of Symbian. Nokia uses the S60 version of Symbian, and SonyEricsson uses UIQ. They both develop it themselves but the core is the same between them.

The biggest problem with SonyEricsson is that almost none of their phones have EDGE, so unless you get one that supports 3G in the US, you are screwed and stuck on GPRS, also when out of the 3G coverage area you drop back to GPRS.

FWIW, even the specs page at SonyEricsson says it's Symbian...

Sadly almost ALL S60 devices suffer from speed issues. Even their top of the line N95 feels sluggish. That said; there is a new N95 on the way with better battery life and US 3G support, that may be worth looking into.

Anyone have any experience with the Qtek 8300/8310?

Looks like Qtek's are the same as HTC, but no the 8310 doesn't seem to have been released under an HTC label. It's getting pricier and my strong urge is to stay away from Windows, but it seems to have everything I want.

I learn something new. I only thought it was on P series and the M600.

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It's the HTC Tornado. It's an old(er) phone so it was made before HTC went private label.

I'd stay clear of it since it is slow and fairly limited. You'd be better off with a T-mobile SDA...

I picked up a used (month old) E65 on eBay a week or so ago for less than $300. I really like this phone. I honestly don't notice any sluggish UI response, but I have never used a BB or similar device.

I found it easy to setup (T-Mobile) and get it working the way I want, including the SIP calling feature. It plays nicely with my.funambol.com synchronization.

I wouldn't pay full price for the phone, but highly recommend it.