How to keep a girl quiet with a mobile phone

Ok, so this must rank as one of the more unconventional of my periodic how to articles, but I’ve inadvertently found another use for my increasingly indispensable Nokia E90 – keeping a girl occupied on long journeys :)

I’ve just travelled to Devon for the weekend, which took about 3 hours or so, and had a passenger with me with the attention span of a hamster with ADHD. Trying to find some way of fending off the constant “are we nearly there yet?”s, I was looking for some way to occupy her that didn’t involve earplugs (too obvious) or a gag (even less subtle!)

With a characteristic flash of inspiration, I had it – my Nokia E90 and Facebook! Now all I had to worry about was how well the E90 would be able to hold its HSDPA connection as I travelled at, er, around 70mph! As road tests go, this would be the ultimate – how did the E90 fare?…

Much to my enormous relief, the E90 coped brilliantly. No matter where I went, or how fast (up to the speed limit, of course!), my passenger was able to browse Facebook continuously without a single dropped connection.

As she sat there, looking at the photos various friends of ours had posted, I reflected on how far the mobile phone industry had come in the last decade. Just ten years earlier, for example, Orange’s mobile phone coverage ended at Bristol, and “mobile data” meant driving a load of floppy disks around in a van!

Now, here we were, browsing the Web at several meg a second while in a car, cruising at motorway speeds (70mph) on the edge of Dartmoor.

As you might have guessed by now, I am extremely impressed with my E90. Actually, that’s an understatement. It’s everything I ever wanted from a mobile phone and much, much more. Sure, it looks like a brick, but its keyboard is perfect, its ability to connect to the Internet anywhere at broadband speed has been a life-saver these past few weeks (I’m currently homeless and have no fixed line broadband connection – not the best situation to be in when you run a successful blog!), and its Web browsing abilities are simply superb.

Add to that the Sat-Nav feature that I’ve now figured out how to work, its glorious camera, great video recorder, the best calendar and ToDo list manager I’ve ever used (both of which I’ve managed to sync seamlessly with Google’s Calendar), MP3 player and ability to view and edit office documents, and you have simply the best smartphone on the market today, bar none.

I’ll post a full review of the amazing Nokia E90 in the new year, once I’ve finally moved into my new house (and found my camera!!).