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Even though I am OK with my carrier (Cingular), I HATE MY PHONE! I have Siemens A56 and it absolutely stinks. The only reason I have it is because I got it for free, but little did I know when I signed that dotted line, I get stuck with it for 2 years. The display died on me in the past, and I’ve had the cingular replace it once, but it started to go again this week (when I needed the phone to get in touch with my softball team), and I can’t take it anymore. My phone is not upgradable till the end of the August, and so I am in search of new phone.

I started by creating a want/wish list: Assuming I will continue with Cingular service, I need a phone with GSM network (with SIM). The phone is durable and reliable. I don’t want to spend (much) more than $100 for it. I don’t like my “candy bar” style phone so I am looking for flip phone. I don’t care if it has built-in camera or not (but it would be fun if it did, since I am using flickr a lot lately). And I’d like to be able to back up, organize, and re-sync phone numbers, on my computer (connecting via USB?).

After looking around in eBay, uBid, letstalk.com and
Amazon, the only phones that I found within that price range is either LG C1300 (Reviews: cnet, letstalk, mobiledia, phonescoop) or Samsung SGH-X427m (Reviews: cnet, letstalk, phonescoop). But they are both available with contract extension for free from Cingular (which I am not eligible yet).

Couple of stores on eBay (1, 2) is selling NOKIA 2651 for around $110 (including shipping). But not much is known about this phone it seems. Only review I could find was phonescoop

C|Net’s phone reviews and Buying Guides are good starting point. Phone Scoops’ Phone Finder was very helpful.

I think I’ve narrowed it down to two phones. Motorola MPx200 (Reviews: cnet, phonescoop, mobiledia) is Motorola’s first Microsoft Smartphone. It uses Windows Mobile for Smartphones as its OS. Yikes, Microsoft? It looks like I can still sync it using iSync and something called PocketMac ($29). I like that it also use SD card for expansion.
As for the price, I found without cradle $123.64, with it $149.67

My other choice is going with Motorola V180 (reviews: cnet, phonescoop, letstalk, mobiledia)
Though its still on the expensive side, it does have USB connector, which was interesting to me. I’ve figured that the phone sells around $135 or so.

This entry was posted on Friday, June 24th, 2005 at 06/24/2005 @ 3:17 pm and is filed under Tech, Gadget, and Computer. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.