Cellphone!

[azurelunatic]

If you have my cellphone number (ending in 63, not 42), be aware that this number is probably more dead than Dumbledore's ghost after the Winchesters have cracked his tomb, salted his bones, lit them on fire again, and hacked any Horcruxes (horcruxen? horcruxii?) into little bitty pieces and salted them, set them on fire, and then salted and re-burned the ashes of them and put out the blaze with holy water.

My dinky little cellphone is lost, either at work, between work and the car, in the car, between the car and the bank, in the bank, between the bank and the car, in the car, or between the car, a hard place, and a lot of water. I tried calling it. It's on vibrate. It claimed to be ringing. It may have lied.

Qwest's IVR will respond to "I lost my cellphone" with a Real Human, even after hours. This is good to know.

Got the cellphone suspended. Turns out my contract is up on Sunday. Good to know. I've been planning to upgrade when my contract is up, either with Qwest or with another service. (If I go with another service, then I want to get the phone switched over to Cox voice over IP, just to have communications services together and to have only one bleeding bill to pay on household data/voice rather than two.)

I'm going to be shopping around for new services as well. amberfox, what network are you on, and does your network do free in-network calls? (I asked the same thing of Darkside, because calls to him are the #1 priority with a cellphone. He thinks he has Sprint, but he's not sure, and he got distracted and started ordering me around in efforts to find the errant cellphone. ♥ the guy.)

Comments

[wibbble]

If you mean the E62, it's a crippled version of the E61 the rest of the world gets. The E62 lacks 3G (which isn't a huge issue in the US, since your networks don't have much/any UMTS coverage), and more importantly wifi. The E61 is a nice handset, although lacks a camera. If you can get an E61i, that's better.

I've got an E65. It's a lovely little phone, and I'll be sad to give it back. I don't think the Americans are getting it, though.

It looks like the 6133 is the US version of the 6131, which is a really sweet simple handset. If you don't want a smartphone and like flip-phones, I'd recommend it. The 6300 is probably the best S40 (ie, non-smartphone) handset Nokia make.

[azurelunatic]

Looks like I transposed the digits, yeah. I'm looking at the selection that wirefly.com has for zip code 85021 for free or cheap, because I was planning to go with the phone that came with the new service or a new contract, depending on whether I renewed the Qwest contract or not.

I'm hoping for a smartphone. I've been wanting one for ages.

[wibbble]

If you come across any specific Nokias, let me know.

Don't overlook Windows Mobile, either. There's a ton of models out there and they get updated every 6-9 months, which means that there's perfectly good smartphones that are 'obsolete'. Just, uhh, don't get a 'Windows Mobile Smartphone'. They don't have a touchscreen and can't edit word/whatever documents. You want 'Windows Mobile Pocket PC Phone Edition' - they have a touchscreen and better software compatibility.

[azurelunatic]

I'm eyeing a Palm Treo 700wx at the moment, although goodness knows I'll probably have changed my mind ten times before I do actually go ahead and get a phone/plan. (My prepaid cellphone provider just sent an automated call with a promotion saying that the airtime card I'd just bought but not entered would be doubled, so I'll be fine for a while.)

[wibbble]

Is that the Windows Mobile one? It's supposed to be quite good, although I don't know if it has wifi. I wouldn't get a smartphone without wifi these days. :o)

If it's a Palm OS one, I would - personally - not get it. I don't think there's life in the Palm platform any more. Which is sad, because I loved my old Palm III and Palm V.

[azurelunatic]

Windows Mobile. I don't see it saying it has wifi. Alas. But it looks like a good option.

[wibbble]

Apparently it has no built-in wifi, but it /does/ have a full-sized SD card slot, so you could get an SDIO wifi card for it.

It's also, to my European eyes, terribly ugly. External antennas are frowned upon here. :o)

[azurelunatic]

External antennas are either on older stuff or so-new-it-looks-like-it-should-have-one stuff over here. The visible antenna says "And I connect to things, too!"

[wibbble]

They're a huge tech fashion faux pas here. Which, as it goes, is one of the reasons why Treo isn't a popular brand outside of the US.

It's not like they're really needed for good signal reception, after all.

[amberfox.livejournal.com]

I run Sprint, which does do free in-network calling, I think by default, and has some fairly reasonable extended plans, but I'm not really sure about the details. You might want to check with your local Sprint store, because I remember some of the plans we looked at being a little better than the ones I'm seeing on Wirefly, but that may be a regional price difference. But depending on the difference in month-to-month cost, it might even out to pay a little more for the phone and save on the extended.

Currently I'm using the Motorola v3m RED, and Dad has the grey. I covet a Blackberry or something like it, but that's not anywhere in my near future.

[azurelunatic]

Sprint it probably is, then. I shall poke at the blonder half's mom.