The Ashdar Partners Blog

First off, this was an open box purchase of a Motorola XT701 from Newegg . As far as purchasing open-box and refurbished gear (Thinkpads and iPods, mainly) goes, I've always had good experiences. This is the first open-box item that I have purchased from Newegg, but I've always had good experiences with them. There wasn't much in the box: the phone, a wall charger and adapter for US outlets, a USB to mini-USB cable, the battery, the battery cover and a couple of small pamphlets/manuals. There was a 8 GB SD card already in the phone. Removing it to insert my own 8 GB SD card seemed more trouble than it was worth, so I'll be transferring my old files over via USB. The box seemed like it had been tossed around a little bit, but nothing seemed to be damaged in any way. The phones' screen is easily bigger and has better image quality than my old Nokia E71. Initially, I had problems getting the phone to take my Gmail and GAFYD credentials. I was chalking this up to be...

OK, so I needed a new phone. What drove me to choose the phone I did choose? Primarily, I use a phone as an internet device/PDA and not so much as a phone. I'm not a talker, and it irks me when I have to burn two minutes to retrieve a voicemail. I'm not worried about call quality or anything like that. I do love email. I am not interested in playing games, so processor speed isn't a big worry as long as it lets me type as fast as I can. I am not interested in streaming HD movies over 3G, or anything similarly bandwidth-intensive. I have 35/35 FIOS at home, two laptops and a HTPC for anything 'heavy'. My main consideration for hardware was whether I should get a phone with a physical keyboard or not. I have mixed emotions about physical keyboards. They make the phone thicker, and I'm not always keen on the keyboard layout. I've never used a virtual keyboard long enough to get used to it. I have had a few people with Droids tell me that they use the virtua...

For the last 1.5 to 2 years, I have been using an unlocked Nokia E71 as my only phone. I used it heavily, often for two or more hours a day. My primary uses were email, calendaring, contact lists and to-do lists, generally done through Gmail, GAFYD and Exchange servers. I also used it for alarms and Google Maps and Google Reader. Starting over the summer, the E71 would go through periods where it would reboot itself a dozen times a day. Sometimes the E71 would reboot when I was using it, sometimes when it was in my pocket and sometimes when it was laying on a table. Sometimes I would be at the office, sometimes at home, sometimes in a car. There would be periods of rebooting, and then the phone would be fine for a few days, or a couple of weeks. The battery always had plenty of juice. There seemed to be no reason to the behavior, it just seems like a disease that E71 phones can contract. I presume that I simply dropped the phone one too many times. Back in May, I dropped the phone...