I toured the phone shops today. Which, er, makes it,
PHONE BUYING! Live from a very rainy Cardiff Queen Street!First stop was the Three store, in the Capitol Centre.
Three will do me an N95 8Gb for £27 a month (500 minutes/texts), rising to £33 if I add in the £5 1Gb/month data download package. Which is nice. The bloke very patiently showed me his phone in action (as the display model's battery had died) and did his best to answer my strange questions (he had no idea what Flash was... and thought I meant the one on the camera). When he went to check the stockroom this little Indian bloke started to ask me a question before noticing my fleece was 'Network Rail' and not 'Three'.
Next stop, the surprisingly large Vodafone store, St David's Centre.
Vodafone present a slightly intimidating image. Their vast, minimalist store (everything is either white or red) was staffed by a large number of immaculately uniformed staff standing ready to attack with the sort of Hitler Youth precision of Wimbledon ballboys/girls. Vodafone will do the N95 8Gb for £35 a month: 700 minutes, 250 texts, 'unlimited' internet, and a special bone-us: free Nokia satnav for three months! This raised a rather crucial point that had not been mentioned anywhere else nor in any of the literature I'd been reading: Using the phone as a GPS thing is free, but if you want to be told you should have turned left 250m ago, it'll cost you €70 a year. Ouch.
The whole reason I'd wanted the N95 is that it did the GPS satnav thing, having to pay an added subscription is a bit of a kick in the nards. The ever-mighty Dr Gaywood has helpfully provided a link to let you haxx0r Tomtom stuff in and use it instead, but... still, argh. I hate being fickle like this - this morning, I'd been almost convinced of the Viewty.
As I write this, the Vodafone brochure is open next to me. Each phone has a pretenious 'title' underneath its name. The 8800's is 'Sapphire Arte', which my perverted mind has interpreted as
'Sapphic Erotica' (NSFW!!!) so I'd best move on. It doesn't help the facing page has a vaguely jailbaity girl peering saucily* across a tree branch as if she's about to quickly carve herself a buttplug from the the bark.
*She looks a bit wonky, to be honest, like she was bussed in from Lithuania or something and will make more money for this one degrading video shoot than her entire village will make in their lives. "Please British Husband, I make you happy!"
Directly across the way lies the T-Mobile shop, and safely away from that increasingly worrying tangent.
In stark contrast to the army of Vodafone people, there were only two T-Mobile staff. She didn't seem to know much, but it was pretty clear their deals sucked balls - I either bought an outrageously expensive contract, or paid a substantial amount up front for the phone. She also claimed that they 'weren't told' how much the satnav packages cost. Which is a bit like selling fishing lures but not knowing which fish will be likely to go for them.
Virtually next door, the Virgin Media shop, who at least employed vaguely fit birds.
Unfortunately, they don't do N95s, and she almost gave me a heart attack when she told me that the satnav thing costs '£90'. She burbled something about it maybe being for two years, or whatever. Or things. Yes.
NOBODY had the Viewty available to try. Every time I asked about N95s, the staff members pulled them out of their pockets (as they all had them), which should tell me something. The nice chap in Vodafone did go and get me an LG Secret to try... and it's cack. An epic miscalculation of design.
The entire screen is touch sensitive... but only works in full touch sensitive for ONE MODE (media extensions or something). The rest of the time only the bottom quarter is touch sensitive, and all it does is work like the directional buttons on a normal phone.
WITH ONE HUGE FLAW. In the middle of the 'up/down/left/right' portions is the button you have to press to confirm your selection. And it is so tiny that the way the flesh of your finger squishes slightly as you press it virtually guarantees that you'll also inadvertently press up or down and then select the wrong thing. It's absolutely idiotic, and is even worse than the 6230's original selector dpad thing.
By this stage, I'd had about enough. And, sensing I was about to walk back to the car, it started to piss down. And even better than that, I stopped literally as I reached the car.
MY OPTIONS, THEN:
1. Get an iPhone 3G, using my anger (which has been logged with O2) as a blunt instrument to obtain one.
2. Get an N95 8Gb, and use SECRET LUNIXS TRICKS THAT ONLY GAYWOOD UNDERSTANDS to navigate.
3. Get an LG Viewty, and resolve to buy a seperate Satnav... but then forget to and then wind up regetting it.
4. Just keep my somewhat tatty 6233.