I've always not been one for phones; for years, I had a (relatively) old Nokia 6100. It does the job of phone calls and SMS messaging very well, and lasts absolutely ages on a single charge.
At the beginning of the year, though, I wanted 3G connectivity for my PDA and laptop (yes, I have a whole range of portable devices, and every one has its use, although not necessarily simultaneously), and so liberated a Nokia 6280 from eBay. The 6280 was pretty good - long battery life, a WAP browser, and that all-important connectivity. However, when its screen broke last week, and replacement LCDs were not too cheap, I went back to eBay with two rules: it had to be under £60, and should fit the two 6280 batteries and umpteen small Nokia chargers I have (the Internet Tablets use them too).
As you can imagine, this doesn't leave a great deal of choice. In fact, excluding the 6280, it leaves pretty much only the N73. Having experienced the 6280's wonderful affinity for dust (Nokia didn't quite get the sliding mechanism dustproof - it gets inside the screen...), I decided to go for an N73 and see what they were like; after all, how bad can crazy selection criteria be?
Not too bad at all, it turns out. The N73 is a pretty neat little device, but more importantly, it runs Symbian. I had presumed all the older smartphones were like the 6280, but I was pleased to discover that there's more S60 apps out there than I can shake a stick at, and that the version the N73 runs is still the most current, compatability-wise.
Three days later, and I have a whole set of things, including Google Maps, which gets impressive position accuracy from cell info alone, the QR code reader I would have needed a year ago at Barcamp Brighton, my Google Calendar synced up, an application that changes to and from silent mode depending on my location (using cell towers) and calendar events (i.e. anything marked as a lecture), and more importantly, the Python.
In short, it's lovely. The next step is getting a permanent, cheap data plan; Orange will sell you one for £5 a week (on Pay As You Go; I'm not shelling out hundreds on a contract), but Three have the suspiciously good offer of £5/month for 2GB, which is better than some ADSL packages I've seen, so I'm seriously considering migrating. The only thing holding me back is Orange's excellent customer service, and the fact I have a deal from them which means I get five free texts a day, forever, for £12 that I paid back in 2001 or so. I'll have to see if I can keep that under a new number.