My Nokia E61

I write this because I am no longer the sole owner of E61 at the office. Mr. E has been in awe of this phone because of its wide landscape screen, and is, gawd, replacing his communicator with an E61. Why?? My dream phone is a sleek communicator but since I can only afford a plan 2500, I learned to love my E61, but I guess more so because I get to be unique. So unique that when a badminton playmate saw my phone, he immediately noted that it looked like his Aurora calculator.

But I love its many features. I don't use all of them (and for this I think I may have the wrong phone- specs is over my requirement), but here are some of its features I love:
1. The wide screen allows me to have a real pleasant internet browsing and blogging experience. In fact most of my blog entries are now done in my phone. The wide screen with a 5-turn joystick, the fast loading of screens, together with the P10/30 minute charging of smart makes it no longer necessary for me to have a landline installed at home.
2. The qwerty keypad allows me to type fast and write notes during meetings, send it via bluetooth to my laptop and send it via outlook. Now this could all be done on the phone itself if I had a Blackberry Connect or mail connection, which I don't have. This is actually a great feature because even Blackberry users rave about the E61 because of this option. So in meetings you'd find me with just a phone and if you see me with my phone, I'm either typing up notes, synthesizing the meeting, surfing or blogging (when I'm bored with the pace, or the speaker). Sometimes I do all three in the same meeting, using the WLAN connection for internet access.
3. Reading my documents/reviewing a presentation/practicing a presentation. Again, I just send the file via bluetooth and the phone recognizes Microsoft Office applications like Excel, Powerpoint, Word and even Adobe Acrobat. So when I'm done with a presentation, I send it to my phone, and I practice what I'm going to say. God, I did this by fly when I typed up my Docent Script Saturday from 6 AM til 8 AM, then when I changed my choice of paintings, I had to revise my script at lunchtime and practice my script before my 3 PM practical test. I loved it!
4. The voice activation feature lets me know who my caller is, along with the ringing tone. It's cool.
5. Sleek design. It's modern, it's light, it looks business-like.
6. Standby applications mode- i can talk on the phone and then go back to surfing, or text then switch to browsing. This is a real neat feature.

There are downsides of course, and here is my list:
1. The size is too big to fit in a pocket.
2. I know we're not supposed to text while driving, but we do. It's a bit tricky to do this.
3. You have to have an sms accelerator installed because when you send a hundred text messages a day, it somehow needs help. The software patch fixed this.
4. If your fingers are stubby or big, don't get this phone. This fits my fingers perfectly, but sometimes my letters still get mixed.
5. It can't hold birthdays on the calendar, which should remind you each year how old the celebrant is. There is an anniversary reminder, but not a birthday. Go figure.
5. No camera

So yes, whenever somebody asks me what my phone is, I tell them it's my calculator. Oh, but it holds my life, too.