Tom graciously offered to babysit me during my day-long layover in and out of Heathrow, and he brought friends (photo #2). Even better, I got the okay to take one of them with me on my 'round the world tour!
But which one?
Well, the white N97 actually belongs to Tom so that's out. And truth be told only the N86 was earmarked for me, mostly because of its high-res camera but also because the other two technically haven't been released to the public yet. But you know what? I'm totally okay with that.
I know, you think I'm an idiot for not begging to take the N900 with me, especially being a Linux-loving freedom beard and all. But hear me out: Though Nokia's open-source behemoth has more raw horsepower than the other two, I've got some issues with it -- at least in regards to this particular trip:
- I'm going to be running around Bangkok, Singapore, Taipei & Tokyo documenting anything & everything I can, and I simply don't have the time to get fluent in Maemo right now.
- The QWERTY keypad on the N900 is good, but the one on the N97 is significantly better, IMHO. The keys are farther apart and have more travel, which makes thumb-typing more accurate -- at least for me.
- I can't put my finger on it (no pun intended) but even after a few minutes with it the N900 feels less like a phone and more like a really small computer. My netbook is already a fairly small computer, so what I need is a phone.
And now, thanks to Tom and my other pals at WOM World, I'll have a high-functioning handest in Tokyo that's worthy of a Japanse keitai...
Arigato! m(_ _)m
