I have a Nokia 6630 now, as my first smartphone, one year ago. The very thing I suffered from is using the normal keypad for chatting and managing PIM. I plan to have a new device having the following factors:
1. Full usable QWERTY keyboard.
2. S60 3rd Ed.
3. 3G connectivity.
4. WLAN.
5. Effecient display size.
6. Effecient RAM usage (to be able to browse the Web easily and fast).
7. Good battery life.

I think these characteristics matches E61i and E90. But because of E90's high price, I think it's hard to have it. So E61i is the remaining. I'm impressed by it through the reviews I read. But I'm not a heavy email user as an enterprise employee. But prefer to type easily, use full office apps, browse the Web easily, use full PIM. Again, I think that E61i has all what I'm looking for.

My question, is it really the best phone for my needs? Or there are more choices that I don't know?

If it is the choice, please answer my following questions:

1. I know that its battery is good. What about its RAM? Can I browse the Web while using other applications, or it will be a problem?
2. Our 3G networks support HSDPA, but E61i doesn't, can I use it to access normal UMTS 3G?
3. What about the overall stability of the device?

Thanks

My question, is it really the best phone for my needs? Or there are more choices that I don't know?


Depends. If you can put up with its sheer size, the E90 might be more suited as it's got a larger screen making web browsing far easier, has the new S60 web browser which addresses some of the big annoyances of the first version and has loads more RAM. But as you said, it's dear. And you'll need to unfold it to take advantage of its large screen and keyboard which might not be the best for you depending on where and how you want to use your device. Apart form that, the E61i is your only choice I'm afraid. The E70 is even worse in terms of RAM and has a smaller screen.


1. I know that its battery is good. What about its RAM? Can I browse the Web while using other applications, or it will be a problem?


I've only got an E61, not the i version but I understand that the i version is just like the original one but better. In this case, yes, the battery life is pretty good. My E61 lasts for 2 to 3 days with moderate use.

Web Browsing with the built-in browser (the same in the E61 and the E61i) is far from being that convienient. The lack of touchscreen clearly shows its limitations here. Having to control a mouse pointer with a joystick is fun at first but quickly becomes irritating. The browser also has annoyances. It can't remember username/passwords or form fields, can't page up / page down and IIRC you can't type large amount of text in form's text field as no scroll bar appear if the text you're typing exeeds the height of the text box.

That said, it does the job and it does it better than most other mobile web browsers out there. The visual history in particular is just great and does make browsing a lot faster when you need to jump 3 or 4 pages back.

It is very RAM hungry though. If you navigate to large pages with large images, you will run into Memory Full error. You can use other small applications while browsing the web (ie, you can make phone calls, send SMSs, browse your contacts) but any bigger application will most likely cause the web browser to shut down because of the lack of RAM.

Can't comment on your other questions.

I don't know about E61i's RAM management, but on E70 it sucks. On the previous N70 I used to listen some music while surfing. On E70 is not possible, music player gets a bullet from web browser right between the eyes and fells dead. It might be the same also on E61i, since it haves the same amount of RAM. The pages are loading very fast though, same as on PC.