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As the Op asking for advice I should maybe report what I did go for in the end.

Last week I bought a red Nokia 700.

After having read numerous reviews I did some thinking and came to the conclusion primary functions for me were radio performance (coverage) and speech quality. Good battery life and a pocket friendly form factor are also high on my list. Slick interface and surfing experience are secondary and photo, video and music rather low on my list. Gaming comes dead last on my list.

My first choice was Motorola Defy+ (praised by many for call quality and good battery life, being rugged doesn't hurt either) until I found rather too many reports of quality issues including spontaneous re-booting mid-call.

What now? I thought. Many of the more desirable and highly rated alternatives got high ratings despite poor speech quality and coverage (even after filtering out obvious sour grapes). Somewhere there I realized Nokia probably had some of the best alternatives for me and the 700 is very pocket friendly. The N9 is very tempting but a bit on the big side in my view who thinks web surfing on the phone is nice optional feature (at least for now).

How good is the 700?
I don't know, I have nothing to compare with apart from my 8+ years old 2G phone. I am simply overwhelmed but that would have been the case with any non-faulty smart phone.

Some observations:
* The screen is superb. It is readable even outdoors in sunshine (Scandinavian spring sunshine) and I have turned it down as far as it gets.
* Taking and making calls works fine.
* The same goes for SMS.
* Email and Web are early days for me but setting up email was at least no problem. Opera Mini works better than the built-in browser.
* Battery lasts better than anticipated. I am on my second charge since last Monday but then again I don't play games and surfing has been about finding out what it is like. It is very easy to tweak the 700 for saving battery and easy to fire up wifi and whatever again when needed.
* The user interface is pretty slick and quick I think but then I am used to waiting for Vista to respond (at work).

OK, you all know all this already but this is a new world for me -- and I make a living designing basestations!
:-)

/Martin

Should 96 for dpi always be 96 or should it be replaced by the actual dip of ones monitor?

/Martin

Almost a month since starting this thread and I have yet to do something about my phone inventory. I have simply been too busy for anything but short bursts of 'researching' smart phones. Now I have two questions.

I have never really felt the need for navigational help even when traveling abroad but that is when it could be useful. On Android phones navigation relies on access to Google Maps I understand. That means constantly downloading data with roaming fees. I assume there are ways around this and I have found at least one app that claims it can cache Open Street maps. What do you guys use? What works? (Buying a Nokia phone takes care of this) Are there any differences between Android phone brands?

Second consideration: If I ever wanted to write myself some little app it would have to be Python-based. This should be possible for Android and, I think, for Symbians and Meego but what about the others?

/Martin

Great response so far and great fun!
My smartphone colleagues enjoyed gutterslob's rant for sure :-)

I do find old-style phones but those that are pure 2G-phones only are very basic in quality and with less features (only dual band for instance) than my old T310. Old-style 3G-phones (Nokia C2-01 etc as mentioned by linux4life88) seems better built and works on all major frequency bands.

I popped into one of those all things electronic department stores tonight and probed a few phones. The Nokia C-whatever seem nice and the Sony Ericsson Cedar (or some such) wasn't bad either. Of the proper smartphones I really only noticed the Sony Ericsson Xperia Ray for being sleek and still having some screen size, Xperia Active for its rugged chubbiness and the Nokia N9 for looking and feeling much better/solid than any Samsung/HTC/Apple. How they actually work is impossible to know but some of them were alive and I could at least read the screen of the Nokia C5 (I turn 52 in a months time) and its keys felt OK.

The Motofone is not a smartphone by any stretch of imagination but I kind of like its style. I don't think I have ever seen one over here though.

/Martin

+1

For those looking for photos I can recommend NGS:
http://photography.nationalgeographic.c … NavPhoWall

/Martin

You mean to say that acroread does not 'see' your printer, or?

Have you tried evince, xpdf or any of the other pdf-readers available in repo? What about other programs like Abiword or web browsers? Are you able to print at all?

/Martin

This is was Scribus looks like as far as I know. I guess the guys and gals developing Scribus don't prioritize eye candy.

/Martin

Well, the list of possibilities is endless.

When sailing I use my GPSs as speedos since a GPS is way cheaper than a boat speedo.

When I get back home I analyze the track log. How did I do today? Tacking angles? VMG...
(I use GPSman, GPSAR and Gartrip for this)
http://hem.bredband.net/b262106/Boat/images/long.png

Other people may want to use their GPSs for actual navigation/driving directions with a live map on the computer screen. This may include pre-planning the route.

Then you have GPS-based games like geo-caching etc.

Or helping out with the Open street map project.

/Martin

Thanks guys.

I will try it but I am not in a hurry. I need to stay compatible with my octogenarian mother whom I help with some typographical guiding and general OO help-desking.

Another worry is the thought of LO not being 100% backward compatible with older OO documents. I have a number of those both at home and at work.

/Martin