m600i Getting closer to the perfect internet mobile

UPDATE | According to this story, the M600i is not only Blackberry-like, it actually supports Blackberry Connect for push email. Looking nicer all the time! (Microsoft ActiveSync is also supported so I guess that means it should be easier to sync with Windows PCs than previous phones.)

UPDATE | Sony Ericsson tells me this actually runs the Symbian 9.1 OS, with the very nice UIQ 3.0 user interface and a touch screen. S-E says this is significantly superior to series 60, and is the same OS used on the P900/P910. I have to confess that every time I've ever attempted to use a P910 I've been wishing there was such a thing as touchscreen tooltips… the interface uses lots of arcane little icons. However, the UIQ 3.0 "one handed" interface should really improve this a lot. On the upside, S-E confirms that you can turn the phone on its side and view webpages using the width of the 240x320px screen, which might make some sites marginally more viewable.

Being a tech addict is an expensive habit, and like any sort of addiction, involves painful withdrawal when you can't afford the next hit. For example, having recently bought a Sony Ericsson S700i, there's no way I can justify, let alone afford this new M600i. But it doesn't stop me wanting one… baddddd. This phone is very close to what I've been looking for:

  • It runs Symbian series 60. (Symbian's interface is still complex, but at least I am familiar with it now, and it does have the advantage of having a wide range of software available.)
  • You can run Opera on Symbian, which is without doubt the best web browser for mobile phones.
  • It looks Sony-Ericsson-good compared to most other Symbian frankenphones.
  • It has a Blackberry-style QWERTY keyboard
  • It comes with an RSS feed reader built in (though I guess Symbian RSS readers are probably fairly easy to get)
  • It is 3G, so even though latency is still painfully slow and you still get horrible periods of inactivity as the phone switches cells etc, at data does come down the pipe relatively fast.
  • It doubles as a 3G modem for your laptop via Bluetooth (Though it remains to be seen whether Bluetooth can support anywhere near the max 384Kbit/s 3G data rate)
  • Being both a Sony-Ericsson and Symbian device, I would hope it would sync easily with Mac through iSync (the Nokia N70 does, if you apply a simple hack).

On the downside… the screen (240 x 320px) is still too small to be very useful for web browsing.

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