X-Series: trials and tribulations

So. Day four in the X-Series house. The phone arrived from 3 a day after ordering it. Sexy silver packaging and the phone itself (Nokia N73) is smaller than I remembered (basically, same dimensions as a K750i, albeit a little longer.)

The problems start when I check the supporting literature: pages 5-12 of the X-Series Guide are missing. Which means there's no info for the five key services I want to use. I ring to activate my account and discover that all 3's customer support has been offshore'd. Not a problem, as the staff are very polite (although there is a modest degradation in call quality.) BUT. It takes 10 minutes for the operator to figure out that my details aren't on her system yet, so I need to ring back in 24 hours. Which I do. Details are on the system now, but activation won't happen for another 48 hours. Today the SIM has been activated and I can use the phone with it's 3-assigned number. BUT. I want to port my O2 number, which I've had for eight years (from back when O2 were Cellnet...) Another call; I provide the PAC code and am told that the number won't be ported for seven days! Whether this is a standard timeframe or not, an eleven-day wait before my phone is configured the way I want is just too long.

More thrills occur when attempting to set up the X-Series (Silver) services, especially Mobile Mail (which is definitely non-trivial.) Nevertheless, integration with Gmail is good, and it's a real boon to be able to access it on the handset. Skype is a breeze, and call quality is possibly better than over GSM/UMTS (despite the slight lag.) Should mean I'll stay under my 300 inclusive minutes forever. Messenger is fine too, although there's a bug that prevents you from keying the correct letter when a word is carried to the next line.

The phone GUI isn't exactly Apple iPhone standard either. Some of the iconography is a bit scrappy and it's not easy to find everything I need. But I'll get used to it once I've set up shortcuts etc.

By the end of the evening I've already driven Bron to drink through my constant mobile-mediated emailing and IM'ing. Not Crackberry then, but close.

Posted by monoman at 09:30 AM on January 19, 2007