lukaszthegreat: what's your history?
1. Nokia 5110 Good and reliable basic phone. It served me several years.
2. Nokia 9210 Communicator (I don't remember if it was the i-model, with a few extra features)
I was quite excited when I got this, I though it is a space age device. In the end though I used only maybe 10% of its features, it was maybe a bit too advanced for its time, and a bit too bulky too to keep with you all the time.
It was great as a conference phone though, and you could write long SMS (text) messages with it much faster than even with modern touchy smartphones. Also I think it was my first phone that I used successfully for web browsing, that was quite an experience. Also that red ball game that came with it was great. At best it felt almost like a mini-laptop.
This phone still works today, even with its original battery (albeit the battery will certainly not last that long). I would argue it was the first smartphone that at least I had, as it was at least the first Nokia phone for which 3rd party companies could make and sell games (and apps), but it never flew as those games wouldn't work on other Symbian phones I think, they were Communicator-only.
3. Nokia 6100 Since the Communicator was so bulky, I bought this small color phone as my secondary backup phone. It was great as such. It was so small and light that you could easily smuggle it into a jail in your ass, if needed. I never tried that though. Try the same with your iPhone, sideways.
This phone also works even today, with its original battery (not in use though). Back then phones were made to last...
4. Nokia E66 My main phone for many years, I think from early 2008 to 2013/2014. It still works, but battery doesn't last necessarily even one call without charging. Also some of the buttons are getting unresponsive.
I really liked this phone. Web browsing was passable with it even without touchscreen (I used Opera Mini and Opera Mobile browsers), and I just loved its free GPS car navigation. Besides normal calls and SMS, using it as a car navigator was always my main use for it, even abroad like in Thailand. It was great because it offered full offline navigation capability, it could be used as a car navigator even without a SIM card if needed (no data connection needed like with Google Maps, which was a life-saving feature abroad). I would claim that it worked better as a car navigator than what my current Android phone with MapFactor Navigator (+ free OpenMaps).
5. Huawei U8800 (Ideos X5) My first non-Nokia and non-Symbian phone. This is actually my current phone, I originally bought if for my wife several years ago but took it for my own use as a replacement for the Nokia E66, and my wife got a high-end Samsung phone.
It was cheap already back then and quite good for its price, but there's always been some problem with its batteries and how long they last. It always had quite poor battery life (always had to recharge almost daily even if you didn't do much with it), and at some point the original battery got broken. I recall it even gave smoke out, and the battery had some kind of bulge.
Later I found and bought a 3rd party replacement battery for it and also rooted the phone in order to install a newer Android version for it, at which point I took it into my own use. But still I need to recharge it pretty much daily, and sometimes the battery level might drop oddly (e.g. it was 60%, then half an hour later without any use it complains at 10% that the battery is about to run out). There shouldn't be any third-party apps eating the battery because I clean installed a new Android on it.
This works passably as a car navigator (Map Factor) so I use it for that purpose. Sometimes it crashes though just in the middle of operation, that's not nice.
One definite praise though for the Huawei: I've been using it for years without any screen protectors etc., and its screen has remained completely free of scratches, looking like new. That is really something compared to my old Nokia phones, e.g. the E66 screen is nowadays very scratchy and dim from lots of use. I guess those older Nokia models didn't yet have these new fancy Gorilla-glass screens or whatever which apparently don't get scratchy at all. I guess all new smartphones, even the cheapest ones, are nowadays fully scratch-resistant.
I'm now about to ask my employer for a new phone, after all they are supposed to give me a phone yet I am using my own crappy Huawei. E66 was the last phone I got from them. Probably I'll ask for some mid-level Samsung Android phone. Could be LG too, I don't really care as long as it has Android (could be Jolla too if I wanted to be adventurous). No Huawei though, I don't like how they modify the Android user interface nowadays.
