E72 – how I miss thee.

My trial E72 from @WomWorldNokia went back on Friday.

In fact, both of them did. Because I ended up with two – the first one that was sent displayed odd behaviour when typing in a browser – it flipped the first two characters around. This is not a known bug apparently, and was thought that it might have been an installation issue, but I did manage to replicate it once or twice on the second one, though it was by no means as prevalent. I wonder if it was some combination of a browser bug with marginally differently responsive keypads…

Anyway, that small irritation aside, the E72 was a welcome step into the world of the smartphone for me. I was looking for a gadget that, at a push, could stand in for my sad and sorry for itself netbook. (Still staggering on but very much on its last legs, thank you for asking.) And, at a push, the E72 can do that.

I could, and did, blog from it. I could, and did, receive and send emails. This meant that I could stay in touch with business like speed while out and about with the children, depending of course on the vagaries of T-Mobile’s internet coverage. A small irritation while sending emails was that each time it connected to my email server, it told me that the certificate was not trusted and asked if I’d like to accept permanently or just this time. Accepting permanently (as I know precisely why the certificate isn’t trusted – not actually something I advise ppl to do) didn’t deal with the message, which came up every time. Another bug, methinks.

But, the strength of a smartphone in the modern world is, for me anyway, in staying in touch with social media. OK, so it means keeping twitter switched on at all times! 😆 And the E72 was good for that – I used Snaptu, which is a free downloadable app, and tweetphoto to plixi so that I could share photos I took with the phone too.

And it meant that I took and shared more photos, tweeted while out and about, and generally was a much less twitchy social media mum 🙂

So, is the E72 the phone for me?

I don’t think it is, sadly. The keyboard isn’t up to scratch for my needs – if I’m going to have a qwerty keyboard (and I think I probably *need* a qwerty keyboard) it needs to be a little bigger. And the screen size isn’t quite up to it either, nor is it touch screen, which I’ve seen on some friend’s phones and thought seemed really quite fab.

If it were a choice between no smartphone and an E72, I’d go E72 any day, but I’m hoping for a little more, tbh, and I’m sure that there’s a Nokia out there that can deliver. 🙂

What I don’t know is whether I can get my hands on it by Thursday for Open Planet Ideas Build Hour 🙁 If not, I may have to be sneaky and deputise dp to take Big to rookie lifeguard!