Russell Beattie

Sorry to all the Apple heads out there who gave me support when I bought my first Mac, but I just wasn't using it, so I eBayed it for $400. It wasn't powerful enough for my needs and it was *loud*. It sounded like a jet engine in my bedroom. Also, having Linux at work, Windows on my laptop and Mac at home was giving me fits - even after making everything I work on as virtual as possible (email, web, aggregator, etc.). I need a Mac lappy instead.

So I sold it last week, and then with the money burning a hole in my pocket (save? invest? huh?) I went out and bought a shiny new Nokia 6620. I've been jonesing for this phone since January and just finally decided I just couldn't live without EDGE data speeds, even if I had to give up the 1 megapixel camera and lighter body of the 7610 to move to the 6620. It's totally worth it.

Last night I put my stereo headset into the 6620's Pop Port (god that port is big and ugly, no? I wish it came with an adapter so I could use my own headphones) and after I played with some videos on rTV (saw the trailer for Spanglish... Paz Vega comes to Hollywood, rock.) I started messing with Real streams. I went to Marketplace.org and listened to the entire 30 minute show from yesterday, clear as a bell, without skipping or pausing at all. *FANTASTIC*. This is what I've been waiting for!

This is really where the future is, high dataspeeds on a smart phone. Viewing video and streaming media is going to be key. Having EDGE finally meets the speeds of CDMA 2000 1x, but instead of having a RTOS phone, I have a full on 32 bit OS and 512MB of storage. Rock on. I've been waiting for this since I first got my 7650 and wanted 1) more storage (check) and 2) higher bandwidth (check).

Check out the speed test results from DSLReports:

2004-09-08 21:01:31 EST: 88 / 41
Your download speed : 90924 bps, or 88 kbps.
A 11 KB/sec transfer rate.
Your upload speed : 42827 bps, or 41 kbps.

Not super, super fast like my Moto A845, but better than plain GPRS (I think... I *should* be getting closer to 90kbps with EDGE... [UPDATE: My account may not be activated, the other phone here does get close to that speed. I updated the numbers to show it]). And hey! I was testing out the speeds and I saw that DSL Reports has a Mobile Speed Test! Type: http://text.dslreports.com/mspeed in your mobile phone and it'll give you an approximation of the the connection speed (which is more or less what I saw by using my computer and connecting over Dial Up Networking). Very cool!

EDGE isn't nearly enough though. I can't wait to have the 6630 in my grubby hands with full-on 3G speeds (faster than DSL), but that's going to be at least six months out, so the 6620 will do nicely for now.

-Russ

P.S. Here's the number from Verizon's Motorola v710:

2004-09-08 17:45:16 EST: 75 / 35
Your download speed : 77683 bps, or 75 kbps.
A 9.4 KB/sec transfer rate.
Your upload speed : 36037 bps, or 35 kbps.