Since I “upgraded” from my HTC Wizard device to a Nokia feature phone (XpressMusic 5310 on T-Mobile) a question has been bubbling in my mind. Do high-end devices like iPhone, BlackBerry, S60, Palm, and Windows Mobile really bring more functionality and solve the issues we believe they will?

So far my experience is mixed, but positive overall. Some things are super-easy, some more difficult. The niftiest thing for me with this device is something I’ve always downplayed about my previous smartphones: aesthetics. It’s been literally years since I had a phone that could be considered “sexy”, so that’s one of the fun things.

Many functions are quite easy and really well implemented. Of course, my new one is a music-oriented phone, so that’s one feature that’s well done. Sure it can’t store 80GB of tunes, but the 4GB miniSD holds more albums synced off Rhapsody than I can listen to in a week – more music than I had normally listed to in the past. The FM radio is also a nice feature that’s well implemented.

Things that aren’t as easy as a smartphone: email & web. Obvious really, but I’m surprised at how much I really can do on it. Aside from the T-9 text recognition, email really is darn hard to do – especially on devices where the carrier (T-Mobile in this case) has screwed around with the capabilities. I can’t even add my Google-hosted domain’s email account because of what they’ve done. The way this particular device handles email (and I’m sure most feature phones are similar) is to have them all sent as SMS messages that can be charged for.

This sucks because I’m paying for their “all you can eat” Internet package, an additional $30 a month – why can’t I configure simple POP email? Stupid when you consider that the standard Nokia 5310 software stack provides easy configuration for POP. Guess which firmware I’ve loaded – it’s not T-Mobile’s any longer.

Still, I can get email on the phone – even could with the T-Mobile firmware, I just used the browser. Yes, the browser is limited at best, but there’s this great Java based browser called Opera – yeah I thought you knew about that. ‘Nuff said.

So, I’m sitting here with a phone that cost me $50, I can install software to do specific things, I get email (pulled, not pushed – but that’s OK by me), IM, tunes, ‘net browsing, text & picture messaging, 2MP camera, video recording, miniSD slot, EDGE (ok, wish it were 3G), QVGA screen on a 3.5” device (great picture), more than twice the battery life than my old HTC Wizard, and extremely pocketable. I can’t find anything wrong.

I’ll readily admit that it lacks a certain coolness of many of the higher-end devices like WinMo, Blackberry, S60 and so on. The iPhone is in a class by itself on the cool meter so I won’t even go there.

I’m content though, until there really is a viable, useable, cool, fun 3G touch-based smartphone on T-Mobile. I know I’ll have to keep waiting, but at least I didn’t drop $700 on the HTC Touch Diamond, just to have a cool phone. Now I can spend the remaining $650 on something like an Acer Aspire One netbook, and a Flip Mineo. Maybe I should think of dropping my T-Mobile Internet package and picking up a Verizon EVDO data package… I’ll have to think about that.

Photo credit: nobihaya