I have been a little silent lately (I may be in danger of ruining my New Year's resolution of blogging twice a week or more in 2007) because I have been busy and the hotel I am staying in has had spotty wireless connections. What I wanted to talk about on this post is my new cell phone.

I went into the store and told them that I needed a phone without a camera. The nice lady there looked at me like I had 2 heads. I had to explain that I sometimes go to secure locations where a camera is not allowed. Unfortunately those same locations are the ones where I don't have a permanent land line and they tend to be far away from anything else so it is the perfect scenario for when you would *need* a cell phone if you had car trouble or just to check in and say that you are heading home in the middle of a storm and that your family should not worry.

I have service through Cingular and they only had 2 models in the store that didn't have a camera. One was a Blackberry and the other was the Nokia E62. On the whole I have liked the phone but I have some things I don't like. So here is my list of what I like and don't like:

Like:

• Screen: The screen is fairly large and bright. I have set the background as a picture of my children that was taken with my wife's camera phone (she doesn't have the same restriction) and it is easy to see even with the appointment and to-do information overlaid on it.
• Phone: This is a lot better phone than the LG one that it is replacing. To be fair the LG was the free model but it was hard to hear a lot of conversations where I haven't had a problem with this one.
• Form Factor: I have a blue tooth head set but I have also used my phone with it up to my ear and I like that the phone is small enough to be comfortable holding but also large enough that I can cradle it between my shoulder and ear when I need to jot down a quick note. I have also found that it does fit in my pocket when I don't want to wear it on my belt.
• Keyboard: At first I didn't think I would like the QWERTY keyboard but I have found that it is a lot faster to enter data and easier to figure out than the old phone where I would have to press the same key several times to cycle through the letters it represented.

Don't Like:

• Synchronization: For some reason when I synchronize with Outlook it will pull down appointments but when I go into view the details (notes in Outlook) they aren't there. If I add a new one it will replace it in both the phone and Outlook. That is not good for things like conference calls where the phone number is in the details instead of the location.
• Symbian OS: I was really hoping for a Windows Mobile 5.0 phone so I could continue to play around with mobile phone development. Unfortunately they all have a camera in them. I have no idea how to program for the Symbian OS and quite frankly I doubt that I will ever have the time.
• Belt Clip: I got the Cingular belt clip for free and twice I have had the whole thing come off my belt. Once was when I was picking up my backpack with the laptop in it and bumped the phone. The other was when I was getting out of my car. I think the seat belt caught on it but I am not sure. In both cases the phone didn't take a hard fall but it was kind of disappointing that it doesn't stay on better, especially considering the cost for the phone.

All in all I would have to say that I am satisfied with the phone. I don't think it has the cool factor that the BlackJack (the phone I really wanted) has but then again I have never really thought of a phone as a fashion accessory. That is one of the many reasons I will not be rushing out to get the iPhone (if Cisco doesn't stop it).