E90 And E61i Go Nomadic
I was catching on my RSS today when I stumbled on a great story on The Gadgeteer. The post is about a featured gadgeteer, Tynan, and details the gadgets that he took on his trip around the world. Every single one of the gears are chosen very carefully, they are “the results of months of research, reading reviews, and product testing”. Tynan admits that they had put together “the ultimate collection of electronics, gadgets, and gear” to help them through whatever situation life might throw at them while traveling. From backpack to laptop, camera, watch, video camera, music player, earphones, and many others, they were pretty much ready for everything.
Tynan’s phone choice fell on something I think we all will agree is the perfect companion: the Nokia E90. Here are his explanations to this choice:
Once again, the Nokia was mainly chosen because of its resolution. The inside screen is 800×352 which makes it easy to look at maps with the built in Nokia Maps, use SlovoEd to translate things, or view web pages.
The Nokia has a built in GPS which takes a little longer to lock than a regular automotive GPS, but once it’s locked it works just as well. Nokia provides maps of most areas of the world for free with navigation available at a reasonable rate.
Perhaps the best thing about the E90 is that it supports VOIP calls, so I can call back to the US for under 2 cents per minute whenever I’m near wifi.
I believe this says it all. But Tynan isn’t traveling alone, his friend Todd is totting around with him, and upon further investigation, I was able to find out Todd’s phone of choice. In this very long post, Tynan goes into further details about everything the two guys carried, from razors, to underwear, clothes, shoes and all their gadgets. Apparently, Todd has taken an E61i! Good choice, again, I guess the guys need a good QWERTY in their hands.
Although the 2 Eseries aren’t the only gadgets these guys are totting around, I think their choice enlightens more the versatility of S60. This is the second time an S60 3rd device is chosen as a travel companion, after Aaron and Georgie’s choice of an N95 8GB as an only companion to travel through South Africa, a trip that is about to start on April 14th. The two teams went for an S60 3rd edition phone, because they knew they could rely on them to add 3rd-party software and execute everything that needs to be done. Having traveled myself while packing victoriously only an N95-1 and an N93i for pictures, videos, music, WiFi and other uses, and considering Ricky’s latest connectivity woes and the way his N95-3 carried him through the week, I know this is more than doable.
If you want some details about Tynan and Todd’s 6-month world trotting schedule, or if you want to catch up on their endeavors, their blog Life Nomadic is being constantly updated. They have already been through Panama, and now they are in Tokyo for a while. They are taking their time to explore the cities and the cultures, and honestly, I envy them.
Do you know any other globe trotter packing a Symbian device as his main phone? And what device, in your opinion, could fit more as a traveler’s companion? N95, N95 8GB, N82 (as with the Urbanista Diaries), E90, or another one?
[Picture taken from Life Nomadic's Flickr account]
I was a big fan of the E70 when I was in Europe, but when it met an untimely demise (I had been using the auto-lock and after it crashed during a calendar synch, it would no longer recognize my existing or reset pass), I bought a used E61i and have been happy with it as well. The only things I wish it had (more memory, integrated GPS) are in the E90, but that’s too rich for me right now.
Thanks for the post about us!
My ONE huge complaint with these phones is that there’s no good scrabble for them. We don’t want anything fancy - just a solid one or two player scrabble game with a built in dictionary. The EA one is terrible.
I would kill / pay handsomely for this.
Tynan
We’ll have to look further into it, Tynan. To tell you the truth, Scrabble was never my strength point, but I know that Ricky plays it a lot. So we will see if we can find a decent one for you
Very cool; and I am glad that they are doing such things with their mobiles. The next thing I’d like to see is a non-traveliers version where people are using their mobiles only in day to day rural/urban settings where they don’t leave a city. That would demonstrate versatility on another degree that could do the mobile culture good.
Very right thought, Antoine. I have had an idea about this for a while, but I am still haunting down the time to do it.