Replacing my old mobile 5140i

I am using two mobiles, one for business usage is a Qtek 2020i. Something that people call now a smartphone and was called a PDA when I bought it. It is still fine for my usage, although the sound is not very good (a shame for a phone)- but I have an excellent Ericsson wireless headset. The second was my Nokia 5140i that I use in common life because I think the Qtek is too big, and I have always a fear to break it. The 5140i was a so called outdoor model capable of resisting shock, dust and water splash. It did its job very well. Unfortunately I took it so often with me without special care that the screen got scratched at a point it became unreadable under sunlight.

So I decided to replace this Nokia. Obviously I started by looking at Nokia so I don't have to re-learn the software...

Is it worth an article? I think so. First the Nokia catalog is very, very,very large, the time they had a few models (when I bought my first model a 2110, I think there was only one) is gone.

Choosing between them is exceptionnaly difficult and if not enough complicated Nokia put you in the middle of the list, models that are not yet available.

Second surprise, you can search the catalog, only if you have Flash. I think this is a ridiculous usage of Flash. No problem to require it for illustration, video, animations, but why for searching ? Ajax stuff would do much better with less requirements.

Next, the list of criteria is very incomplete. I know I am a mobile dinosaur, but I don't care that much about RDS Radio, MP3 etc. I want outdoor/robut/water resistent, loudspeaker, USB interface and if possible Bluetooh. Well none of my criteria are in. I think they need a serious update. Specially that recent model basically have most of it...

Finally the most missing info is... PRICE ! What a hell is this. For each mobile I had to google searching an online vendor &@"%!

All of that to realize that there is nothing like an outdoor water resistent phone. So they give up, you may have everthing at Nokia but a simple solid robut phone !

So done for Nokia. I remembered having seen a similar phone from Samsung. I found in fact two models B2100 and B2700. The web site is nice but does not tell (sell) you that much.

So google again and I found http://www.gsmarena.com/samsung_b2700-review-279.php. This is a very well done web site. I must say I have been impressed by this mobile, falling and falling, squezed by car and finishing under water in a sink. That's my phone !

So I moved to the biggest mobile phone shop of my area (Cartronics). There, basically you can find any model on the market. Unfortunately, there are so many phones on the market that I could not find an exact explantion of the differences between a few Samsung models.

More important, the vendor ignored what USB was and (after explanation) though bluetooh is sufficient (still not current on a desktop / corporate machine). This is specially strange as this phone is showing a micro-USB connector which is becoming a standard and could become 'the' standard for power loading... Its explanations about sync where not convincing - telling me this was only very basic... But as written before I don't need much more. So I decided to buy one two see (thinking buying a second with a different color for my wife later).

I was then passed to antoher vendor who had the kindness to open the box. There, surprise - a cd with software (good) ... and the USB cable (very very good). So this was definitively picked as my new outdoor phone....