| I work for Nokia. The N73 was recently added to the list of phones that employees could order for them selves to use as company paid mobiles. Three of my colleges have got them, and like them. It is fairly small; I would say it is slightly smaller than your 6280, though I have not seen the two side by side. It is smaller than other Nokia smart phones such as the 6680 that I have, the N70 or N80. The screen is quite large, high resolution, and looks very lush. One college has one in Red and it looks nice if you like the colour. Unlike the other Nokia phones on your list (I don’t know about the Sony-Ericsson ones), the N73 has a mechanical shutter. (I don’t mean the lens cover). This will get you much clearer photos of anything moving, as it means that the action can be frozen by a fast shutter speed, and the data read of the sensor afterwards. Camera phones without a shutter have to take video and then extract a frame, which means the fastest shutter speed you can have is about 1/30 second and you get motion smearing on the picture. I would definitely recommend it if photography is a priority.
The N80 is a much more general-purpose device, with as many features crammed in as possible. If you need Wi-Fi, then it is the better choice, but bear in mind that it will be fairly tricky to use it as your network will configure the phone to use GPRS in preference so as to drive up their revenue.
I can’t comment on the E61.
The N73, N80 and E61 all run the Symbian operating system. (Series 60 variant) This means that the phone is portable computer, and you can install third party applications such as satellite navigation software, or third party games. Unfortunately this also means that the phone takes about a minute to switch on, and in some places the software is less mature and has bugs. The Sony P990i also runs Symbian, but this time the UIQ variant. Similar third party software will be available but will not be directly interchangeable. I have also read reviews suggesting that there are bugs, but I don’t have any first hand experience.
The 8800 and your 6280 run a Nokia propriety OS called Series 40. Other than Java midlets you can’t get third party software, but because Series 40 is simpler, the phone will switch on much more quickly, and has fewer bugs. I don’t know about the Sony W950i. |