Originally Posted by Agent 
I'm fussy with phones. Not fussy about features, their looks (too much)....but their....buttons
I utterly can not stand these new "flat keypad" phones that seem to have taken the market by storm. They don't give enough response on the keypad presses for me. Always find myself double typing letters.
I tried a L770 the other day and quite liked it, plus I like Samsung phones. Only problem is thats its exclusive to 3, so 2 questions that I can't seem to find a solid answer on Google for:
1) Is it easy to unlock - ie, are local phone shops going to have an issue unlocking it?
2) Can I turn off the 3G ability so it doesn't drain battery life?
Also if any of you want to recommend me a phone I'm all ears. It doesn't need any fancy features really - no camera requirement (so I don't mind if its rubbish), doesn't need MP3 (although FM radio would be nice), the single most important things to me are that its a reasonable size and has a good keypad. Bluetooth is a big bonus.
To keep things in perspective - I'm still using a Samsung D500 from when it was launched, so whatever it is has to last me several years
Cheers
Best thing is just to trawl all the local shops and ask them for a demo of the phones, and once you've had a good look around tinkered with the phone etc., just say you're going to another store to compare prices. The display phones don't tend to give you much appreciation of the real ones that you're going to get.
But I must agree, i prefer to feel something responding to my actions rather than the flat keypads. I'm quite fussy with my phones as I can text quite frequently, but it can also get some abuse in my pocket. So I prefer flip phones, but most companies have given up on flip phones, and they all seem to be slide, candy bar, or just touch screen which annoys me a bit.
There are a lot of phones still < £50 that have normal buttons, but some phones are known to have poor build quality (I know the S500i SE for one). So long as you are happy with the samsung software, and that's what you are used to, try go for a similar one, I know they make quite a few slide phones with actual buttons still
As for the L770 being unlockable I doubt it will be fully unlockable, as you would most likely want to debrand it and flash new software and three tend to use their own software for you to access thier home internet etc. But Samsungs are known to be fairly easily unlocked with some code sequence, but it depends on the model and generation of phone.
Sorry if I haven't helped you out all that much
