itssamuel.com is the home of Samuel Cotterall, a web designer & developer from the north west of England.

I had been toying with the idea of buying a contract phone for a few weeks, and on Saturday (After seeing my brother’s new Nokia 7360) I took an hour off work and went shopping.

I had a few problems:

a) I know nothing about phones: I don’t know what 3G is (well, I have some idea), I don’t know about compatibility with other devices, and I don’t know which are the cool models.

b) I wanted to spend £25 a month and have plenty of call time to talk to Caroline, but at least 200 texts a month.

c) I have no idea which network is “the best” - as in best for coverage, deals, prices, service, etc.

Networks

So, I spent the morning looking on the Internet, then went out to the Orange, Vodaphone, and O2 shops (luckily, they are all next to each other on Southport’s high street.) and picked up a load of brochures. At thispointt I would like to thank my boss for letting me sit off and compare all the contracts for most of the afternoon.

But both Orange and O2 had pretty convincing deals, offering the same phone (the Nokia 6111) for the same price. One had a few more minutes, one had a few more texts, and they both had some nice extras for the 18 month contract.

I was beginning to get a headache.

Orange

I am always one for following my gut feelings. I have been an Orange customer since the late 90’s, Caroline uses them and their website is better (very Web 2.0, don’t you think?).

So, I signed me up for the 100 minutes (including the Magic Number: I can add a number every six months, to which I can call the person for an hour, and only pay for a minute), 50 land line minutes and 1000 text messages (with free insurance and answer machine!). Check out Orange’s deals here.

But back the other half of this two-pronged dilemma: the phone.

Nokia 6111

At this point my head was killing and I was well aware that I had been missing from work for half an hour and should probably get back soon, so I tried to make things simple.

“I want something small that I can talk to people on, and maybe sends andreceivess text messages”. I hate having to carry a mobile phone, but unlike Chris (who campaigns against owning a mobile - I agree with him when he says he hates getting all those none-essential calls) I like to know that people can reach me if they need to.

Of course, the smaller the phone is, the less features they tend to have. “If you are into photography then these phones [the ones he is about to show me] only have one megapixels cameras so the quality isn’t going to be that great…”. I smiled to myself and went “Yeah, I am, but I have a perfectly good digital SLR…”

So, he picks up two: some Samsung and the Nokia I already had my eye on. I had pretty much sold the 6111 to myself before I got to the store, so I had to justify it to him (he seemed to be a Samsung guy) so I put it down to two things: I know how to use Nokias, and I already have a data cable for them.

I bought it, and it’s very nice.

Maybe it’s just me, or are slidey phones really cool? I can recieve a call and answer it in on swift motion by putting my hand in my pocket and opening it up as I pull it out. Then end the call by pushing the keypad back. Sadly, hardly anyone has called me yet, and when they have, I have been playing with it anyway, or no one has been around to see.

My favourite feature, however, is the fact that I can plug it into my USB port (via the £30 cable!) and copy MP3/AAC to it, and use them as ringtones - so I currently have Modest Mouse’s anthemic “Float On” whenever I get a call. Unfortunately, there is only 20mb of storage, with no Mini SD port - but a built in MP3 player. It just doesn’t make sense to me. If only Nokia released a good looking MP3 phone…

The other thing that annoys me is that the phone will not charge when it is connected to a computer, the same way that the Motorola Razer V3 does .

Also, whilst the camera may have a sensor the size of a pin head it still produces a reasonable photograph, when compared to the majority of camera phones I have played with (including the Motorola Razor) - click the photo for the full 864 x 1152 image.

I was also pleased to read (whilst I haven’t tested this out yet) that the phone supports XHTML - and on that note, I was wondering if anyone knew a way of testing mobile (is it still WAP?) sites without having to upload them to a server and connecting to the Internet?

But it’s early days, I’ve got another 18 months with it. Anyone else have any experiences?

Tags: Cellphone, Nokia, Nokia6111, Orange, Mobile, Phone.