My sprint contract expired this week and I figure that it is about time to switch to a carrier that has better phones and better service. That, combined with my desire to have a phone that would sync wirelessly with my computer, has lead me to change providers as well as phones this week.
The Requirements
Ok, I really wasn't asking much from my new plan/phone. As mentioned above, the phone had to be compatable with my Mac and iSync so that I can get my contacts and calendar events onto my phone.
My Service requirements were that my voicemail be received on time. With Sprint, it would happen that I wouldn't know I had a voicemail until days later. That may have been a fault of the phone and not the service, but I was still not happy with it.
Additional features that I wouldn't mind having were: the ability to check email, that syncing would include the pictures I've associated with Adress book.
The Options Available
After reviewing the list of phones that are supported by iSync, there was one phone that appeared to stand out was the Motorola Razr. Most reviews indicated that the Razr, unlike other phones, did not have sync issues.
I was only a day away from getting the phone from wirefly.com when 3 issues about the phone made themselves known.
1) images taken with the phone and used as address book pictures are directly tied to each other. Delete the picture to make room and the contact entry looses it's picture too (minor issue, but even my old nokia is better than that)
2) The address book lacks the ability to store the address, so syncing loses that info
3) There was also rumor that since the address book only has one generic name field that only the firstname from the mac is send over, no last name
Since those shortcomings combined were a little to undesireable. So I looked on Amazon.com for Nokias since I konw that Nokia does not have any of the above problems. One of the first phones I found was actually a higher end phone on my list, the Nokia 6682 and everything I read about the phone said it synced with ease and had no problems.
To top it off, the 6682 was a smart phone and provided even more features than I could ask for.
Now there is the choice of service provider. The two choices in my mind were Verison and Cingular. Both offer similar packages, but after a little looking, the restrictions and look/feel of the verison phones is just not attractive and Cingular is the obvious choice.
Purchasing Through Amazon.com
As I mentioned above, I found the ideal phone on Amazon.com. Basically I pay $.01 for the phone if I sign up for a new Cinuglar 2 year contract (now the same deal is $50 for the phone with contract)
This deal was almost too good to pass up because the non-contract unlocked version of the phone costs $597 on Amazon.
Everything went smooth with my purchase. The only two things to mention are that shipping took about a day longer than I expected, but that seems to be common with Amazon purchases.
The other issue, and this was a kicker, the fine print on the incredible deal was that you have to keep your contract and be paid up for six months, the contract can't replace any existing contract, and you can't port your number over from another carrier (at least not yet with cingular).
If you fault on the contract, you owe Amazon $250 for the phone. So that being said, it was not worth it to port my number over dispite the need to tell everyone a new number.
Sync with Mac
All that I read about the 6682 being easy to sync with the mac was true. All I had to do was turn on bluetooth on the phone, add the phone as a trusted device on the Mac and then I was good to go.
Comparison
Now about the phone.
This is what you get. The phone, manuals, software CD, power cable, USB cable, 64MB RS-MMC card, and headphones.
After being able to play around for awhile, I really love this phone. I was worried about the size of the phone, but is isn't much bigger than my nokia 6225.
The screen is a huge improvement on what the 6225 had. It is far clearer and much higher resolution, the 6682 has a resolution of 176 x 208 as well as 64k color depth.
There is a 1.3 mega pixel camera that can also record videos.
 insert video clip here
The phone runs the Symbian OS and comes with the following useful applications:
- Full feature Calendar
- Address Book
- picture/video editor
- Email Client
- clock
- instant messanger
- Opera web browser
- voice recorder
- Quick Office
- and many more
Well, what comparison wouldn't be complete without visually comparing the phone with the current hot phone on the market, the Motorola Razr.
 
Well, that's all. Below are links to the Nokia 6682 website as well as the link to the gallery with all of the pictures comparing the 6682 with the 6225, LG and Razr.
Nokia 6682 Website
Full Nokia 6682 Gallery
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