In late November last year Optus rang up saying that my contract was just about up and asked if I was going to renew my contract. The phone caller offered a new Nokia 6710 Navigator as part of the 2-year contract. After telling them that there was still 3 months to they offered to waive that contract and any penalties if I signed up then over the phone. My Nokia 6110 had been a good phone as had all of my previous Nokia phones, so I agreed.

I received the 6710 a few days later and it felt a little flimsy in my hand but thought it would be OK. A week later I received my next bill, Optus had charged me for both the new and the old contract effectively doubling my bill. A rather irate, one hour phone call and this was “fixed” by the call centre. Then I had trouble texting, which I use a lot to customers and my daughters. The phone was “missing” characters as I typed messages into the phone. My eldest daughter sent a couple of text messages from my phone and made the same complaint. The phone was only two weeks old so I rang Optus and after a lot of hassles they arranged a swap over with a courier company delivering a new phone and taking the slightly older phone away. After a few weeks I started having the same problems texting. I’ve worked out it is actually the keypad. When typing one handed the small speaker on the back of the phone that emits the little beep for each character gets covered up by a finger, so you don’t hear the beeps to select the correct letter. The number pad gets really sloppy and has to be pushed directly in the middle of the key or its not detected by the phone. The two sections of the phone “wobble” when the slide is opened. It’s impossible to read the screen when outside, you’ve got to move into the shade or go inside. The new mapping software called “Ovi” is crap, you have to type in a postcode as part of the address search – so I can’t use the navigation feature. How many people know the postcodes of every suburb in Australia? What a stupid “required” option? It’s quicker to get a laptop out, connect to Internode (my ISP) using a 3G dongle and use Google Maps to work out where I’m going. The whole phone just feels like a cheap plastic knock-off, not a high quality Nokia phone.

That’s the last Nokia phone I get, I’ll put up with this as long as I can but I’ll probably end up buying a phone and swapping the SIM card out.