Shoutbox

Hi,

My current mobile contract is expiring soon and to get me to sign on for another 2 years (which I will be doing anyway) they're offering me a choice of free phone.

I've narrowed down the choice to the Nokia E71 and the BlackBerry Curve 8520 and I would love to hear people's opinions.

Personal preferences:
- First and foremost it has to be good at what a mobile phone is meant to do: calling (i.e. intuitive phonebook, volume controls, etc) and texting
- I'm not particularly concerned with additional apps which are 'cool' but will never be used by most people
- Email should work well, be easy to retrieve and read
- A good still camera would be nice, but I'm not particularly concerned and don't care about video whatsoever
- Aesthetics are valid points, if one phone looks ridiculous to carry around then I don't want to be carrying it around
- Small/light phones are preferrable (the Nokia is about 2/3 the thickness of the blackberry)
- I won't be using my phone for music so that shouldn't play into it



Any insight, personal experiences, opinions, or random off-topic comments are very welcome.

Thanks!

well, first of all I'm biased. but if its ONLY these 2 phones go for the blackberry. if you want/need email, BlackBerry is your best choice. Also the keyboard on this model is like the second best ever (best being the 8300 series IMO)

I've also found Blackberry keypads to be much better to type on than Nokia's E series (My dad has an E71 which I find rather difficult to type efficiently on, whereas my friend's Blackberry is very good to type on).

I would say Nokia E71, they are very reliable phones and strong phones. I know that because my friend has one and hes dropped it and treated roughly many of times. Also its got a pretty decent processor in it, ARM11-based single-core Freescale processor running at 369 MHz.

depends what network/carrier you go with in Australia. but if you dont require email on your phone, just get the E71.

I'm leaning towards the Blackberry at the moment because of the keypad and the slightly cooler looking GUI on the photo of the blackberry (oh god i'm superficial)

My friend bought a blackberry (i can't remember exactly which one it is) and she is having a crap load of problems with it. Mainly its lack of simplicity and having to go the long way around to do simple things.
go somewhere and test it out. new telstra stores and virgin stores now have working models rather than dummies.

I ended up getting the blackberry posting from it atm

quote:

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Originally posted by MeEtc
if you want/need email, BlackBerry is your best choice. Also the keyboard on this model is like the second best ever

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Agreed, if you use e-mail, then the blackberry is the phone to go to.