Mobile phone woes

[His Divine Shadow]

I need a new phone, I'm so tired of my old Ericsson T310 which looks and feels like a brick. I've been looking at the Motorola V8, the new RAZR2 phone, the Sony Ericsson W880i and W910i (but it looks like this one is too expensive). I've tested the Ericssons and I like them, esp. the brushed metal of the w880i but I really like my gfs V3 RAZR too, so the new RAZR2 might be just what I want. I don't seem to be able to find someone withthe V8 in vaasa either, Elgiganten/Gigantti (local radioshack equivalent I spose) had only the Ericssons.

The W910i has a better camera, bigger display but it seems the W880i comes with much more internal memory and has walkman functions, what is that? The V8 lacks G3 support but looks gorgous and I do like clamshells, the W910 has far superior G3 support to everyone else. I don't have much use for most extra functions but I really want to get the most bang for the buck.

V8: http://www.gsmarena.com/motorola_razr2_v8-1991.php
W880i: http://www.gsmarena.com/sony_ericsson_w880-1838.php
W910i: http://www.gsmarena.com/sony_ericsson_w910-2007.php

[Edi]

What operator do you use? Also, what do you need out of your phone? Just normal voice calls and text messages? If so, you might as well buy the near-cheapest Nokia on the market. If you want a camera in it, basic camera phones are cheap too.

If you buy a phone with an assload of features that you won't use at all, you're just wasting your money.

If, on the other hand, you intend to use mobile internet etc, then the choices are clear:

1) The W880 is complete shit. It doesn't support EDGE, which means that as soon as you move away from Vaasa city center, your connection speed will revert to GPRS, which is rather worthless. EDGE is 6 times faster.

2) The RAZR 8 or whatever doesn't support 3G, so you're stuck to EDGE speeds even if you could use 3G (much faster).

3) The W910i supports HSDPA type 3G connections, which would theoretically allow up to 3.6 Mbps connections if such were available, it supports EDGE and seems to have all the otehr necessary features, though it may not be such a portable music player as the RAZR is. Hence it is the only sensible choice.

Remember: It's not just what features the phone has, it's what services the operator supports. If the service is not available, no matter what gillywidgets the phone as, they are completely useless. I work at Elisa, though on the internet tech support side and I don't know much about the mobile services, but I know enough to tell you that. Unfortunately they are crosstraining us, so I can't avoid the mobile services shit for much longer.

[His Divine Shadow]

I have Elisa now, had it since my first phone and it's always been cheap as hell but that changed this year when I got a bill that was 2-3 times more expensive while my habits where teh same as ever.

I really like the music and camera of the w910 (According to what I read about it, it's meant as a music player) as I can remeber times I would have wanted either of those and my iPod (1st gen 2gb nano) and/or camera was at home. Combined music and phone is a really nice plus and I see the w910i has radio features, but not FM radio but RDS which I do not know anything about.

I am now switching to TeleFinland which belongs to TeliaSonera.

Addon:
Phonecalls, messaging, music/radio are my main critera, and good looks. Another plus is a good camera and the w910i I tested had a good camera I thought. I have never tried 3G or any more modern features, my current phone being so ancient, I want to catch up on the technological front though, I like the idea of email with my phone.

[Edi]

Then the W910i is the only one you should consider from those three. As for why you got a higher bill, if it was recent, was that there have been problems with the billing system with people not getting their bills for a few months and now the bills coming in bigger chunks and more frequently until it has been normalized. That's even been on the news. So you have not been ripped off, if that's what you fear.

[His Divine Shadow]

Actually they started charging me for services I didn't want and hadn't asked for. It was work related and not Elisas fault but it had todo with my boss having enrolled us all into some group program with Elisa that gave very good bonuses several years ago, I had really low bills, like 20e every 3-4 months to pay thanks to it.

But now because of work they have included this expensive service which makes the bill to 50 instead of 20. So I left the bonus program and then there was no longer a reason to keep Elisa, they also have very bad reception near where my parents live and I am over there alot, TeleFinland has great prices and good reception all around here so I went with them.

[Edi]

Ah, so it's different from that problem then.

[His Divine Shadow]

Well I got a w910i now and while it is an allround awesome phone I got one that was branded with "o2" which is some kind of mobile phone provider in germany. Externally it doesn't show like with some others, only a small o2 you can hardly see so I am not bothered with that.

What does bother me is the software on the phone has got o2 bullshit on it and it is just plain annoying. I would like to hard reset or debrand this phone, but I haven't had any luck in finding any guide for how to do it.

[Phantasee]

His Divine Shadow

ModMyMoto might have a sister site for Ericsons. They have links to most solutions from their forums.

[Ypoknons]

I know people remove physical T-Mobile branding off their HTC Kaisers with sugar cubes. As to remove O2 stuff off your W910i, you're going need to get a firmware without the operator logo. It's harder with newer Sony Ericssons, especially those not of the K850 lineage.

[Edi]

Well I got a w910i now and while it is an allround awesome phone I got one that was branded with "o2" which is some kind of mobile phone provider in germany. Externally it doesn't show like with some others, only a small o2 you can hardly see so I am not bothered with that.

What does bother me is the software on the phone has got o2 bullshit on it and it is just plain annoying. I would like to hard reset or debrand this phone, but I haven't had any luck in finding any guide for how to do it.

Where the fuck exactly did you buy that phone? If you bought it overseas with a next-to-nothing price, it's one of those operator specific phones that refuses to use any other shit and you're going to have a hell of a time getting it to work properly.

[His Divine Shadow]

German Ebay. It has no problems functionally, only annoying O2 branding on the internet application. And yeah I did get it for 120 euros less than at say Gigantti.

Still I want to have it flashed so it'll get factory settings with factory software. No O2 anything.