As a certified “phone geek” in my surroundings, I have faced a lot of “Rita can you help me with this?” or “Rita where do I get that?” questions. The most absurd one, and the most frequent one for that matter, is “What’s the best phone on the market?”. This is where I usually stand, and take a deep look at the person asking. After a few moments, I usually answer “for me, it’s the device X; but for you, I advise the device Y”. This is something I have been doing for a while now, but never thought about writing it until I read Ricky’s opinion of the E66.
Despite the E66 being true to all of its promises, and despite its numerous features, Ricky felt that this wasn’t a handset for him. Which brought me to remembering my usual advice: “There is no overall perfect handset, but there’s a perfect one for each person’s needs”. In the S60 arena, we argue a lot about what handset is the best. For me, it’s the N82 black without a doubt, but I’m sure that if you ask Ricky, he’ll say N95-3; for Steve Litchfield I believe it’s the N95 8GB; for Mitchell Oke it’s the E71 now; for other persons, it could be the N78, E90, E66, N96, N81, E51, and that’s only in S60 Nokia offerings. If we look at other manufacturers and OS, the sky is the limit.
The next time you want to buy a new handset, do not EVER think that you’re bound to a certain model because everyone else bought it or because a renowned phone reviewer thinks it’s awesome. Stop for a minute and think of the features YOU use the most, those that you exploit rarely, and those that are cool to have but of no practical use to you. Then narrow down your search by your top 2 manufacturers and operating systems and scratch the ones that don’t fit your budget at all. Write down the remaining possibilities, go to a phone retailer, hold them in your hands. If a handset doesn’t feel in your hand as well as it does on the screen, then you may want to overlook it since you will be using the device and not looking at its picture.
And make sure that before you purchase anything, you read some good reviews of it: you can head to WirelessInfo, my favorite go-to site for very objective and comparative reviews, or look around the web for subjective reviews with personal impressions. Having a look at both types is crucial since this is the only way to have a great overview of the handset before buying it.
Stay tuned for tomorrow as I continue this series by looking at the appropriate handset according to different user profiles.
