9300 vs. E61

I made the switch a few weeks ago, and I have to say I am very impressed so far. First the good points:

• Phone feels much better made all round
• Connectivity is much better - 3G and wireless make using email and web a breeze
• I am using Mail For Exchange rather than PC Sync, and having my phone synchronise automatically with my Exchange Server is wonderful
• Battery life is much better

However, obviously there are some negatives:

• Keyboard is fiddly - I am getting used to it, but it's half the size of the 9300s, and I don't think it will ever be as fast for text entry
• The supplied Calendar is not great - I am looking to upgrade it when a suitable third party calendar is supplied
• Signal reception is not quite as good
• I had hoped that it would switch automatically between my wireless network and 3G/ GPRS dependent on location. This does not happen - but as 9300 did not have any of these options its not really a negative!

But all in all, I'm happy with the switch (and I's had the 9300 for nearly two year. It was definitely time for a new toy!)

J

Thank you for your detailed response, Jon. A few questions if you don't mind:

I'm a heavy user of Calendar and you said the E61 Calendar is not great. How does it compare to the 9300? I thought the 9300 calendar is not good and I was hoping for a better one on the E61. Are you missing any functionality? Or is it mainly presentation?

Is it faster (opening and scrolling through Word, Excel and PDF files for example)?

And finally, how did you move your contacts and calendar items from the 9300 to the E61? (PC Suite?)

Thanks again...

Re the calendar - it is mainly the presentation that is not as good - the wider screen allowed for more flexible views on the 9300. However I use Calendar extensively and it is adequate - there are a few comments on this forum and varied views.

It seems faster dealing with documents too - and it is, of course, much faster whyen it comes to downloading them.

As I said in my previous post I don't use PC Sync - Mail For Exchange automatically synced my contacts, calenday and inbox with my local Outlook once I'd got it set up. Incredibly painless.

Hope this helps.

J

Hi guys,
I switched recently and the keyboard is quite good though smaller. The main difference is wifi and fast internet. The 9300i is not a solution since processor is slower still then 9300 probably cos wifi uses up a lot of power so processor could be slowed down.
Email and internet work great.
Biggest flaws for me:
only one programmable alarm
cannot cut/copy paste whole columns in excel.
Considering how much cheaper the E61 is with better battery life and faster processor and internet browsing (actually works. 9300 internet browsing is a joke/nightmare), the E61 wins hands down.
However the 9300 feel more like a phone when you speak into it. E61 is quite wide and needs adapting a bit.
As to calendar I didn't notice any difference but I use it for simple tasks.
Don't hesitate to switch, if you don't need touch screen

i miss having to be able to schedule sending sms in communicator, not featured in E61.

also not able to received Fax yet (i'm hoping that 3rd party software will be available), maybe not many uses fax anymore, but i still use 9300 for Fax communication and so easy and straight forward.

email and web browsing is great, i prefer 320x240 cause you see more lines on screen, somehow the browser in E61 able to login to my internet banking.

E61 screen is great too.

at first you probably find it hard to dial using one hand, but i guess you'll get used to it.

opening documents is much faster, but editing in Excel Spreadsheet not easy

would love to have those direction keys left, up, down, right keys on the keyboard rather than using the joystick, never fond of joystick (but i guess not enough space)

batter cover / rear casing could be better, i guess it's nokia trademark for it.