Phones

Just before Christmas, I decided that both my mobile phones (a Nokia 3510i and a Sony Ericsson T610 that I switched SIM cards between every time I got annoyed at one) were past it. So I went into the Orange shop in Sunderland and picked up a Motorola L6 for myself.

A week or so ago, I decided that, depending on the contract, getting a pay-monthly phone could be cheaper than a pay-as-you-go - at least if I get rid of my mostly-useless VoIP line (if you’ve ever spoken to me on it, you’ve probably noticed that the signal quality is dire).

So I went in to Orange Plymouth, and sure enough there was an excellent deal (Racoon 35, I think, which gets me something like 200 free texts and free minutes every month to mobiles on any network, as well as “Unlimited” (except for a 3000-minute fair-usage limit) minutes a month to landlines). And they gave me a new phone.

Wouldn’t let me not have it, in fact.

I eventually got a Motorola SLVR L7e, which happens to fix a few problems with the L6. But it’s not perfect.

• The Bluetooth is quite limited - it doesn’t seem to be able to synchronise the address book or calendar that way. Which is annoying, since it’s the thing I specifically asked about; maybe I should have checked exactly what it could do via Bluetooth.
• The text-messaging has gotten worse from the L6 - there’s no “Reply” option any more. Instead, you get “Send message to”, which prompts you to pick a number from a list - usually a list containing only the sender’s number. It should default to not asking if there’s only one possibility, and probably even if there’s more than one. If I want to send a message to a different number, I should choose that number; mostly, I just want to reply.
• There’s also no Sent Messages folder any more. Why?
• The main menu seems quite arbitrary. The Calendar, though it’s accessible from the Start screen or whatever they call it, is only accessible from a submenu of the main menu.
• There’s no easy way to turn on Bluetooth. You need to go into Settings, then Connections, then Bluetooth, then turn it on or off. It’s a pain when you want it enabled temporarily.

On the other hand, the calendar and address book are vast improvements over the L6; they’re something I especially wanted. It’d be nice if I could easily get at them from my computer, but they’ll do.