Cell Phone Reviews

Last week I went out and bought myself a Nokia 6100 too.

I was waiting on a store in Gongguan to get more 6100s in, but since they were selling for NT7999 w/ Chunghwa Telecom service (lowest price around for that combo) they’ve been out of stock for a while.

Well I finally caved and went to Chunghwa directly on Rooselvelt Rd and paid NT8990 for it.

So far I like the phone very much. It’s the thinnest, hense the lightest (79g) Nokia on the current market(it’s not tiny like those Barbie 8310s). I’m planning on bringing it back with me to Canada after I leave Taiwan so the tri-band is a plus… but you are paying extra for the colour screen, polyphonic ring, 78g weight and the tri-frequency.

Two negatives with the phone so far:

  1. vibrate mode: the 78g weight (most phones are 90-100g+) makes vibrate mode a bit harder to detect when my phone is worn on my belt, especially when I’m walking, luckily the polyphonic ring is loud! (Note: Motorolas cannot vibrate and ring at the same time…stupid!!!)

  2. the default ringtones suck… i swear the default Nokia Tune is the best one that came with the phone… I’m gonna have to do some searching for a decent polyphonic ring again. They’ve added like only two new tones since my last Nokia(a 35xx)

(Note: polyphonic rings rule, once you go polyphonic, there’s no turning back, kinda like 56K vs high-speed internet. Also note: you can’t program your own poly tone from your phone… let’s just say, if you listen to a poly ring, there’s no way you’re gonna be able to reproduce it on your keypad!)

So yes! I’ve owned two Nokias and love Nokia’s current software with its superfast scroll UI, condensed phone books, and ability to actually vibrate and ring at the same time. I’ve also had the displeasure to own and use two recent Motorolas (which really suck compared to a Nok!)

Anyways, I haven’t used my 6100 long enough to say if it was justified to pay almost NT$9000 for it, but so far I would buy it again if I had too.

Not at the same time, but you can set it so that it vibrates first and then rings…

I’m getting an 8310. It had occured to me that they might be a bit girly, but if you get the right color it’s Ok, and besides, I don’t care. I don’t buy phones to look manly. I’m getting it because:

It’s the smallest Nokia and I like small phones.
I really like the 8210 that I had, and the 8310 is much the samebut smaller and with added functions.

I really like nokias. They look nice, and even better the user interface is really good and easy to use, and they don’t have those stupid nobs on the end.

Brian

I’m getting an 8310. It had occured to me that they might be a bit girly, but if you get the right color it’s Ok, and besides, I don’t care. I don’t buy phones to look manly. I’m getting it because:

It’s the smallest Nokia and I like small phones.
[/quote]
Small size is definitely something high on my list too (If you go hiking or biking wearing a fanny pack as I do, you’ll want something small). At 97x43x18 mm, the 8310 is on the small side, but certainly not the smallest phone you can get. If you want small, check out Panasonic GD55 (77x43x17), which is smaller than a credit card.

If size and wear matters, than this is the phone for you:

samsung.com/PressCenter/Pres … 04250.htm#

(How do you put a text “on top” of a link?)

Does anyone have any recommendations for a new cell phone. I haven’t checked out any shops yet but wouldn’t mind knowing what people have got. Cheers amos.

I need a cheap, sturdy phone with good reception and buttons that aren’t too small.

I don’t need any of the other stuff such as colour screen, photos, polyphonic ringtones and what have you.

Thanks in advance for any recommendations.

I consider a LOUD ringer to be an important feature, so that I can hear the damn thing over the din of Taiwan’s traffic. From my inquiries, I learned that Motorola and BenQ are the only phones that ring really loud. I wound up buying the BenQ because the Motorola low-end models that I looked at had their security function disabled (that is to say, you couldn’t reset the SIM card code, so it was at the default 0000). I thought that was crazy, because my previous Motorola phone did have functional security.

Anyway, the BenQ has been OK, and it only cost NT$990 with the two-year contract deal (would have been NT$3500 without that). The model I bought was S630i, but that was six months ago so who knows what they’re selling now - go grab a free catalog at Chunghwa Telecom.

About phone carriers - as much as I detest Chunghwa Telecom for their total lack of English-language services, I switched to them because they have the best coverage in rural areas (and I live in a rural area). Previously I used FarEastTone and I would frequently lose the signal when out in the boonies. With Chunghwa I’m able to pick up a signal anywhere except in a deep valley or canyon. I even had a signal on the top of Yushan.

good luck,
Robert

Thanks for the phone tips Robert. Actually it wasn’t the phone carrier but the reception of the phone itself I was concerned about. I’m with Taiwan Dageda, but there are a lot of places where my friends who also have Taiwan Dageda have good reception but mine has been weak or non-existent.

All this cell phone talk got me curious, so I stopped by Chunghwa Telecom yesterday and picked up the latest free catalogs. It looks like everything has changed in the six months since I bought my last phone. Prices are up, almost everything is a color phone with a camera. Some phones let you surf the web, play mp3 and video games, maybe even have a built-in vibrator. Hopefully, they still include a function to let you carry on a conversation.

I guess you can still get a basic phone, with effort. The cheapest phone that looked decent was Pierre Cardin (I never thought of Pierre Cardin as an electronics company before!). BenQ (which I bought last time) seems to have almost abandoned the market - they had just one model available. I’d probably go for a Motorola if they still have a model with security (which they’ve disabled on some of their recent phones).

good luck,
Robert

Most of the Motorola phones are made by BenQ. They just don’t have many of their own branded phones anymore.

Just today there was a great article posted on The Register about cell phone security:

theregister.co.uk/2004/10/22 … ava_peril/

I think this would argue strongly for getting a cell phone which does NOT include Java or any other built-in programming language.

Sometimes, less is more.

regards,
Robert

“If you don’t find it in the index, look very carefully through the entire catalogue.”

  • Sears, Roebuck, and Co., Consumer’s Guide, 1897

Does anyone have experience with the following two phones: SE T230 & Motorola C155?
I got an ad from Taiwan Dagada (Taiwan Cellular), which is my current provider, offering these phones for NT$1.

I was kind of hoping for something that has at least IR, if not bluetooth… Tri-band would also be nice…
A couple of others for ~NT$1900:
Moto V180
Nokia 3120
Siemens CF62

Another more expensive but with camera:
Siemens CX65

btw, I have had a Benq M560G for about 15 months. I’ve been pretty pleased with it.
Pro’s: small; stylish; zhuyin/pinyin/stroke input for SMS
Con’s: have to change to symbol input for . or ? when using smart input for SMS’s; missing some symbols (AFAIK): $, \
The earphone/mic works quite poorly on scooter (are there any that work ok?), and is easy to fall out of my ear (except when I cover it with my already-been-chewed gum hehe ;-).

I got my wife a Handspring Treo 180 for NT$10,000 about 15 months ago… 16 MB RAM. She’s loved it (has the Oxford English<->Chinese dictionary); can use stylus to write SMS’s. It’s about twice the width of my Benq, but still fits easily in a shirt pocket. But it’s battery life is getting worse and worse. If she uses it much during the day it shuts off with no warning while she is talking. Can still use the PDA functions tho.

Side issue - from time to time I’ll get an SMS message about voice mails that people have left me days before. I use Taiwan Dagada, and also had that problem with the previous phones I had (Motorolas). Lately it has been much better. One time before someone from Taiwan Dagada told me that clearing all the SMS’s should help?

I guess that Samsung watch phone never came out (at least I didn

[quote=“bea”]
Side issue - from time to time I’ll get an SMS message about voice mails that people have left me days before. I use Taiwan Dagada, and also had that problem with the previous phones I had (Motorolas). Lately it has been much better. One time before someone from Taiwan Dagada told me that clearing all the SMS’s should help?
TIA![/quote]

If either the SMS inbox or outbox is full (or actually, if the combined inbox/outbox messages reaches the available memory dedicated to text messaging), you won’t be able to receive any more messages until you’ve deleted something.

You can actually use this method (flooding the inbox) to kill SMS on your phone if you don’t want it. As someone who hates SMS, I consider that a good thing (I have yet to find a phone that lets you turn off SMS). However, depending on the model of phone, this may or may not prevent the damn thing from beeping at you when a new message is being sent.

regards,
Robert

Motorola V150 =
VOMIT

My dog chewed the antenna to shreds on my old Ericsson T29 in the early hours of Friday morning giving me reason to get a new phone. I have to say that I wasn’t that impressed with what was available when I was shopping too. It’s been over 2 years since I bought a phone but they seemed to have gotten bigger and bulkier. I settled for the Samsung SGH X608. Decent phone so far. I’m using it with my good ear since the ericsson’s radiation destroyed my right hearing.

Do you just want to stop the phone from beeping when a message arrives? You can shut off all notifications (I think) on the S-E T100.

Does anyone have anything good or bad to say about the MIO brand? They do PDAs as well. Been eyeing them for a while as an alternative to the IPAQ and Toshiba products.

TIA,