I’m working on a new series of features, Seven Days With…. I want to put a whole series of different mobile phones into the handsets of our team here and SMS Text News — and also some of the readers.
The concept is simple. We’ll take a handset, put it into the hands of, for example, N95-lover James Whatley, and see what he makes of it. The key question is what kind of devices to test out. Most manufacturers are usually game for lending us a unit to try out for a week or so, therefore I reckon the world could, possibly, be our oyster.
I’ve written to HTC and asked if we can check out a Touch Dual or Touch Cruise. I don’t want to just limit it to handsets only — For example, I’ve also written to Bell Canada to ask if we can check out their Unlimited Data offering. We’ll aim to try and do at least one a month, possibly more.
These aren’t reviews, I don’t want to publish ‘it’s got 8gig of ram and a wotsit processor‘ style analysis. That’s not what we’re about at SMS Text News. Other sites — IntoMobile, for example, do a far better job at that. I want to know what the device is like. I want to read personal and real-life examples of how the device performed across 7 days. That means swapping out your main handset to the review unit for the week, not carrying it as a second handset or playing with it for 10 minutes before putting it back in the box. I did 48-hours with the HTC Touch last year and really noticed a substantial difference between my before and after opinions (I was impressed, very impressed).
Devices on my list to do a Seven Days With:
– The new JCB Phone
– Some HTCs
– A Vodafone Simply phone
– One of the new Sagems
– LG’s Viewty
– Vodafone’s new USB data stick
– Nokia N95 8GB (arriving shortly)
What else do you think we should add to the list?
And are you up for doing a Seven Days With feature for us?
Mail me at ewan@smstextnews.com or post a reply here.
Ewan, I’m game to try a smart phone. I would love to give the N95 8gig a shot, I will film a video I’m going to use for a new project I will announce shortly if I can use it.
I think you should try to get a US 3G N95 and see how that treats you. Also when is that nifty phone we saw a promo video of coming out. I would love to hear real world feed back about it. It looks to be the end all be all if it’s loaded like an N95 with an iPhone UI.
Do you have kind of a “template” for the seven-days review or if we want to partecipate we’re able to describe the user experience as we like?
I can do it for a Nokia E51, if you find it interesting.