SYMBIAN ON THE LINE

My advice has been the same for many years: just get the best device today. Forget about the next announced device. You know that adage “a bird in hand is worth two in the bush?” Well, that’s quite relevant here. You will get more use out of a device today than waiting for that ultimate device tomorrow.

And, yes, be ready to see a more desirable device be announced as soon as you buy one today. Just look at the newly announced device, laugh, and know that you will not get it. Because when you are ready to get your next device, there will already be an even more desirable one for you.

It’s inevitable.

Charlie Schick wrote an interesting post on Nokia Conversations (Nokia's official blog) a while ago and I couldn't not write about this because I think the subject is timeless.

The point is we should get used to obsolescence in the mobile world. Things move fast. That's the way it is.

And while I refrain from agreeing 100% with this (being such a mobile geek does that), I do get the point. Actually, it seems I might have 'lived' the point.

I purchased my Nokia N95 in April of 2007, the second day it was available around here. I just had to have it, there was no doubt in my mind.

A few months later, the N95 8GB was announced and subsequently launched, it was basically what the original N95 should have been - all the issues people (well, mainly bloggers) were complaining about were fixed. Did I buy it? No. Would I have bought it if I had not bought the N95 before it? Sure.

Months passed. Years passed. About two and a half years, to be precise, until I bought my next smartphone (a few days ago, actually), the Nokia E55. During this time, there were a lot of devices I craved. And yet I didn't buy any. Why? Well after the geeky crave went away (or at least got to a bearable level), I sat and thought rationally about whether any of those devices would be of much more use to me than my N95. And even if many stroke the "yeah, a bit more useful" chord, none had any feature or, even better, collection of features I just had to have, objectively speaking.

The E55 has 7.2Mb/s HSDPA and HSUPA, a 600 MHz processor (not as relevant as everyone thinks, but still, nice to have), a great keyboard (which is why I didn't buy it's twin, the E52, instead), a digital compass, the BP-4L 1500 mAh battery on board and still manages to be 9.9mm slim. Yum!

Come to think of it, out of the myriad of phones launched in these years, there are only two I feel I'd actually buy. The aforementioned E55 (done) and the Nokia N97 Mini (because its bigger brother is just too big for me, and the Mini's hinge angle is better, and the keyboard seems to have a more logical layout in my opinion). Looking forward to somehow being able to afford that (probably not).

Everything else?

Yeah, a lot of interesting phones had I not had the N95 to start. But I did.

And the funny thing is, I still enjoy using it. A lot. And I still am.

I guess obsolescence is relative, then.