As requested.........

HTC S710 Smartphone

Since my previous phone totally crapped out on me (see post Welcome to Loserville...population me), I've been looking for a replacement one step up in the hierarchy. I looked at several possible candidates, including Sony Ericsson W950i or whatever it's called, and ended up with the HTC S710, because I suddenly got obsessed with having a full keyboard and PDA-like qualities in my phone. Anders - since you requested it, here are my experiences 6 days after the purchase.

Price: Mucho
Even though I got a reasonable deal from renewing/changing my subscription and stuff, I still paid 2300 NOK, which is more than I ever thought I'd pay for a cell phone, and probably the most I'll ever pay for one. "Raw", it costs about 3890 NOK. Still; compared to the aforementioned Sony Ericsson W950i, it was downright cheap (five grand even). This time I even broke with my own principles and bought the "Idiot Insurance", knowing full and well that it was wasted money to the tune of 25 NOK/month until I cancel it.

Features: More than I'll probably ever use
Quad band, WLan, EDGE, 2 MP camera, Windows Mobile 6, plus I slam-dunked a 1 GB micro SD card in it on account of the internal memory being insufficient (or so they told me). I had one in my old phone that I never got to properly use anyways, so I lucked out. Yay me.

My experiences so far: S'all good
Seeing as how I've had the phone for less than a week, I haven't exactly tapped into all its potential, but at least I've come to understand and like the basics. Also; despite it being a Windows mobile, it hasn't locked up on me or deleted all my data yet, so I can only conclude that the nerds hired for the Windows Mobile division have thicker glasses, poorer posture, an even more non-existant social life ex silico, still don't have any lunch money, and attend more Sci-Fi conventions than the regular programming pointdexters they've got on payroll. I bet these guys are the ones that do all the assignments for the regular programmers at Microsoft in exchange for not getting beaten up - that's how computer-savvy I think they are (at least until my phone crashes and I change my opinion). And yeah; I do realize that someone with my profession referring to anyone as nerds is a serious case of "Pot, meet Kettle", but if you're reading a technical review about a cell phone (at least something that purports to be just that), then hook a brutha' up and check out the mirror, pal. End rant.

Back to the features and stuff. The sound quality is excellent, the screen is nice and clear, and the battery capacity is great compared to what I was used to with my Benq-Siemens (charge every other day). So far, the first charge-up has held for six days, which is SO much better than what I'm used to. The sliding keyboard-thingy works well beyond my anticipation, and I really like the fact that it has a regular, numeric keyboard up front as well, so you don't have to open it up, use some magical touch-screen whatever or program fifteen pages in VB to dial a phone number not on your contact list - you simply dial like a human being on a normal phone. Back to the sliding keyboard. The keys are big enough that you can use your thumbs without being a freakin' elf, and more importantly; they enable me to write text messages at reasonable speeds, as opposed to pressing 154 times on one button for the desired letter to appear, then waiting for five minutes should you want to use a double consonant, etc. And don't get me started on the use of the dictionaries that come with these things - Tx or Fx or whatever they're called. I never use them - I use far too much slang to use them straight out of the box, and I don't have the patience required to wait four months until the software automatically suggests something I might actually be prone to saying, like "Moreover", "y'all", "fo' shizzle", "oxygen thief" or "ya epic troglodyte".

The calendar is another useful feature for my use. I typically end up with some of my appointments in my day planner, some on my office calendar, some in the Mozilla calender, some on small pieces of paper in my wallet, and some that I just hope to remember. The reson being of course that I don't have any of the aforementioned tools, save for my memory, at hand constantly, but hopefully my new cell phone will fix that. At least it's very possible to do now, and the calendar function is straightforward and intuitive to use. It's also got Windows Media, so I can use it as an .mp3 - there'seven some accompanying software to trim mp3 files to whatever length you desire. I haven't tried that out yet, but it looks doable from the LOTR-sized manual. It's also got some basic Office features which i haven't tried, possibility for MSN, and quite good brwsing capabilities.

All in all I'm pleased with my HTC S710, and I hope it lasts way longer than my previous phone.