After my major disappointment with the F700, not wanting to be phoneless, I had to choose a different handset quickly. I had originally compiled a shortlist of the iPhone, F700, Nokia N95 (8GB), Sony Ericsson K850i and the Nokia N82.

A colleague of mine was seriously happy with his Nokia E61i but after a trouser test it created a bit too much packet sag for me. I could just buy tighter fitting trousers but thought a different phone choice would be the best way forward.

I’ve been a fan of Sony Ericsson’s for a while, had a K750i for a couple of years and loved it. It even filled in ok when my digital camera broke when on holiday in Italy. So I was leaning towards the K850i but it just wasn’t feature rich enough to compete against the smart phones that are about these days. As a rule I’m not a big Mac exponent, I appreciate the benefits and ethos of the Mac approach but don’t join in the arguments that erupt around Microsoft & Apple. However, I still think the UI on the iPhone is brilliant. The only thing that stopped me getting one is the camera (it’s no better than the K750) and lack of 3G. Oh, and the price! O2 are bringing it in line with normality but that just highlights the initial rip off.

So, that left the Nokia’s, N95 or N82. These babies are packed with goodies. How to choose, the N95 causes some minor trouser problems and who really needs a double slider, also lacks a Xenon flash. I also noticed it has one external speaker, the N82 has 2, stereo, does that really matter? No, but makes you feel good.

So I have an N82. The best bits are:

• 5 megapixel feature packed camera with Xenon flash. Yes it does make a difference.
  
• GPS with maps – it is usable and has assisted GPS. Uses the radio network to help it find satellites quicker and it works indoors! It helped me navigate round Swindon (and to leave nice and quick)
• It has the nice feature of auto rotating the display depending on the phones orientation
• Symbian Series 60 OS is good, it’s trying to be like Mac OS X
• Email support is fine, reading attachments is fine
• Web browser is fine (HTML) and fast.
• WLAN – I didn’t think this was really necessary but once you’ve had it there’s no going back
• Auto voice dialling. No need to record voice tags, it works it out itself. Matches 9 out of 10 times.
• It even has a bar code reader
• There is a lot I’ve not explored yet but I continue to be impressed as use it more and more

What’s not so great:

• Keys are really small, it you’ve got big sausage fingers that may be a problem
• The key markings are really faint and with the shiny body reflecting lots of light are often invisible
• The UI navigation isn’t quite as good as the Sony Ericsson (or obviously the iPhone). Takes a few more key presses to do what you want to do.
• PC synchronisation. If you use Outlook you’ll be fine. If you don’t it’s aggravation. I use Thunderbird. I can export to LDIF and into Outlook express and sync. but this is rubbish. Mainly because only phone numbers go across, no addresses and other contact info. It is possible to play with csv’s but it’s a painful, error prone process and certainly not suitable ongoing. Also synching from phone back to Thunderbird isn’t going to happen. I’m going to experiment with some other approaches to try and iron this out.

I also have a suspicion it’s killing off my Bluetooth headsets. Had two so far that have worked for three weeks then will not stay connected. Spooky.

Conclusion – overall this is a great device, there is a lot packed into a good trouser sized package. I’m seriously chuffed.