cellrater

Can you believe it? – I have been so busy with work I haven’t even bothered to buy a new phone in almost 6 months! My current handset is a Sony Ericsson S500i which is amazing by the way (except for some cracking keys but that’s a different story). The problem is, I am ITCHING for a new handset. At the moment I am eyeballing two nokia phones: the Nokia N95 (8gb) and the Nokia E90.

The N95 is hands down, AMAZING, and has everything I would ever want in a phone except for the full size keyboard. Honestly that is the only real fault I can give it, the only other thing would be its size but its not much bigger than my old N80 so I think I can live with that.

A full size keyboard has been beckoning me though, and although some of the new blackberry phones are looking good I just don’t think I could handle the tiny qwerty setup. That being said, as far as qwerty phones go the E90 is the grand-daddy of them all with a grand-daddy of a price to boot… around $900.00! It also has a huge beautiful screen which would be great for watching movies away from home.

Decisions, decisions… I almost talked myself into purchasing one of the new sidekick LX models today but decided against spending 300 dollars on a phone that is subpar for my standards. I know I would just be bored with it in 2 weeks anyway, no point in extending my contract on a locked phone.

Someone please help me, what would you choose? The powerful and beautiful n95 or the ultimate but HUGE E90?

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So apparently AT&T is going to be selling a new variant of the LG Shine (the successor to the ever so popular chocolate series). I had the opportunity to own the original shine model and the first thing that stands out to me is that the new Shine (AT&T) no longer has the scroll wheel on the front below the screen. Instead AT&T has gone with a boring 5 way nav button like every other phone.

Now don’t get me wrong, the shine wasn’t the worst handset I ever owned, if nothing else it is definitely a gorgeous phone and all the pictures you have seen don’t do it justice. The brushed metal and reflective glass screen are as beautiful as they are easy to get dirty. The thing is though that the shine didn’t really have a lot going for it, and maybe I am just biased having owned so many smart phones, but it just kind of struck me as a middle of the road kind of phone. The only real reason to buy this phone for the price they are selling it for is if you just want something pretty and the scroll wheel (although kind of a gimmick) was a big part of the style and allure of the phone. Once you add on the locked down AT&T operating system and you take a mediocre phone to kind of lame.

I don’t know, maybe I am being to harsh on the LG shine. Sure it comes with a 2 mega pixel camera, HSDPA and video share support but are any of those features really so great considering the phones price tag?

My dislike for the shine may also be due to the fact that I only owned the phone for 3 weeks before dropping it for the first time off my desk one evening. The first and only drop ever received by this phone which caused the mirrored glass screen to crack on each end. I have owned a lot of phones in the past year, and have dropped the occasional handset but I have never had one crack a screen… I think the worst part about it is that the shines looks were all I really cared about, and the mirrored screen was the biggest part of the novelty so having a glass screen killed the last ounce of respect I had for the shine. Lets hope that AT&T took the time to beef up the screen issue before they hit the streets.

Have any of you purchased a shine? Let me know what you think about it.

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So I guess my last post was on July 9th; almost 5 months ago. Its really strange that almost half a year has passed so quickly… Every week I tell myself that I will be working on cellrater again, and every week I come home exhausted and drained. I had the day off today and felt like writing so I sat down and logged into the admin for the first time in a long time and saw that there were 180+ pages of comments waiting to be looked at. I have spent the last hour of my life deleting spam over 3,000 comments of spam, it is insane.

Anyway, I think I have removed all signs of spam and things are looking up. It is almost a new year, so its time for me to buckle down and give this another go.

For some reason, cellphones have become my obsession. This blog is dedicated to that obsession; but its not just any phones that you will find here. I personally am not interested in the hundreds of low end models, and to be quite honest, most American handsets bore me. There are enough places to get information on the phones stocked by the top American carriers, if thats what you are looking for then this probably isn’t the best resource for you. My passion lies in the lesser known GSM phones that you typically wouldn’t find at your local T-Mobile or AT&T so that is what you will find here more than anything. Now, I have been known to toss in an article on a RAZR or the iPhone every now and then if it merits attention but my goal is just to highlight phones that interest me and hope that you (the reader) will enjoy looking and discussing the technology and these handsets from around the world.

So here is to a new year on Cell Rater (wish me luck)

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