I bought this phone about 2 weeks ago and I'm glad I did. In many ways it's a step up from my old phone, but it still lacks a few features my old one had.

It looks way better than my old phone and it looks a lot better than the other phones I was thinking of buying too. The external LCD is a nice touch. Without that the external controls would be unusable.

With the phone closed you can access your music, take a picture, or record video. Not that I condone (or condemn) this but that makes it a lot easier to take photos without "disturbing" other people. You can turn off the shutter sound too. The swivel camera is also very neat and useful. Don't expect amazing quality from the phone, but with the right lighting you shouldn't have complaints.

The 3G network puts this phone in a totally different class. The speed of my phone's internet is comparable to my DSL line. It helps if you use Opera Mini instead of the cheap built-in browser. The only drawback is the phone permissions cause a prompt to come up every time you send out a request. Amazingly enough, if you check the setting of the program you have the same choices and it helps nothing. I've gotten used to it, but there's a hack to get rid of the prompting anyway.

Using the 3G network also affects phone (talk) quality as well. You won't hear any crackling or hissing like you might hear on a land line. What you hear comes in loud and clear, but if there's a weak signal you'll get cut off every now and then. It's also somewhat annoying since when no one is talking it's dead silent and you think you got disconnected.

I'm not big on text messaging anymore (since my allowance was reduced) but the features are nice. You can send video and audio to others (assuming they can handle it). You can also send plain text of course. Compared to my old phone I'm glad to see you can insert custom messages like, "Where are you?" and "I'll be there soon," to save time. Several messenger programs come with the phone, but I believe they use your text message allowance and not data.

I'm disappointed to see that it doesn't have a USB port though. My old crappy phone had one. The only way to interface with your computer is through bluetooth or a proprietary USB cable. I'm also disappointed to hear the cable does NOT charge the phone. I'm not going to drag my wall charger everywhere; that's for sure.

I typically spend about 30 minutes talking each day and about 30 minutes using the internet. Without charging the phone lasts me about two days. If you charge it every night I doubt it will die on you. The only indicator of charge is the little battery icon which shows up to 4 bars. I wish it had a more accurate meter like my old phone (up to 6 bars). Well, according to those 4 bars my phone can almost fully charge in one hour.

These last few things are trivial, but worth mentioning. To my knowledge there is no voice dialing feature, but has anyone ever gotten good results from voice dialing? The included ringtones are a joke. I mean, seriously, someone is laughing at my expense because of the incredibly lame ringtones on my phone. Almost every noise out of my phone is the same one, because anything else will cause people to point and laugh. Obviously you can upload your own ringtones though, and you can use MP3s as ringtones as long as the files are small. I'm sure a 30 second clip would work.

Recommended: Yes

Amount Paid (US$): 100
Recommended for: Stylish Trendsetters - Hip and Trendy