more on music phones
a few days ago i posted about testing phones for being a combined phone/mp3 player/camera, and i must say i've pretty much settled into using the Sony Ericsson W800i. it's just generally a great phone, and the only thing i miss from my nokia 6880 is mobipocket reader. it's the first phone i've been really recommending to a lot of people in a long time. that said, it's a little pricey to import right now, and in the UK these things are going for £49 with a contract, so maybe we'll see these at T-Mobile US or Cingular at a reasonable price in the future, but i wouldn't count on it - i've heard that TMO US has all but thrown out SonyE/// from their handset manufacturer list, and they'd need to produce another model for the 850Mhz band for Cingular, who also seems pretty happy with their RCKR exclusive. I'm using the W800 with Cingular Blue in Chicago, and haven't had any reception problems as of yet.
anyway, a good camera is important to me, so it's pretty much put the audiovox smt 5600 out of the running, despite it's ties to yahoo! music unlimited.
of course, just last week - orange released an update to this windows mobile phone branded as the Orange SPV C550.
there's a good albeit somewhat cranky review of this phone at TrustedReviews, who incidentally i am trusting more and more these days, that points out this phone still isn't quite up to snuff with a few things (specificlaly memory card still under the battery!) but you will noticed that they did bump up the camera spec to a 1.3 Megapixel - which think will be enough to get a few people to upgrade.
