I’m looking out for a new phone recently as my current phone has only dualband; I’ve downgraded from an early Symbian to S40 previously coz of the (first) phone I lost. I took a look at what I wrote in my wishlist:

Candybar phone, light, thin with bluetooth, memory card, cable to PC, simple camera, GPS, wifi/3G, Java, no stylus (this model does not exist!)

I probably wrote this some time back, as such models are in existence already! For example the just released N78 Singtel is promoting now. Maybe not thin and light enough for today’s standards, but I think it is compact enough to be sooo feature-packed. What I didn’t specify in that list are price and design of the phone. By the promotion ($288 2-yr plan, or $0 with trade-in & higher plan) price is really quite worth it for such the entire suite of features.

BUT, too bad, the design is really way out. The look of the phone is pretty good, but the buttons are out of place! I can’t reach the ‘C’ button at all without shifting my grip on the phone. That’s quite a minus to me, the reason I dislike stylus is because I prefer a 1-hand operation, and shifting like this is not good for 1-hand; it’ll slip off easily. The keypad is also not big enough or well separated, unlike my current one which I can do some operations without looking (I can select snooze, off alarm, go to inbox, and other tasks by just feeling my phone while asleep now)

Looking at other phones in the N-series they’re quite close to “my” specs, so hopefully one comes that meets all my requirements or miss the insignificant features. Upcoming 6220 classic (Q308?) have almost the same features as N78, appears to have better buttons, but no Wifi. I’m still considering if Wifi can be dropped with this feature set, its like… I have to pay for surfing? IM? Use GPS with maps? Replace with GPRS/3G? Maybe its even more practical as I need not be in a hotspot, but the charges need to be reasonable. Finally, the price of the phone needs to win me over…