I'm Jay, an American living in the Philippines. I arrived here in April 2009 and I can't believe how many cell phones I've gone through already. I started out using my wife's old Nokia 1650 but I hated that phone- poor keypad ergonomics, no connectivity to a PC so no theme/ringtone customization, and because it was still her phone the contacts were full of people I didn't know.

I then got an old Sony Ericsson P990i on eBay and it was a great phone for its vintage (2005): one of the earliest Smartphones, touchscreen, QWERTY keyboard, quad-band GSM, Wifi, etc. The Symbian OS had a lot of mods and add-ons available for it. I decided though that it was too heavy and bulky to easily carry around in my pocket (it made my shorts fall off, hehe) so I sold it and got a Sony Ericsson T700.

I still love that phone in spite of its poor camera: it's thin, lightweight, rugged, and with terrific keypad ergonomics. Unfortunately the case and camera lens got destroyed- we got Doberman puppies and they decided to teethe on my phone. I couldn't ever get the Sony Ericsson stores here to order a replacement case, so I switched phones again!

I got a Philippine-made MyPhone QT-23: dual SIM, QWERTY keypad, rugged metal case: I like it a lot. However it has a trackball for navigation and it's starting to do what trackballs always do: refuse to move the "cursor" down! I think it just needs cleaning, and it's still under warranty so I plan to get it repaired.

However it seems that my needs have changed again. My wife and I have become active in the local animal rescue organization and I need a phone with a good camera to take pictures of dogs that we come across. The MyPhone's 2 megapixel phone takes really poor, dark pictures in anything except bright sunlight. I have certain other needs and wants as well (notepad/memo, ebook reader, wifi, java) so I'm starting once again to shop for the perfect phone. I'll post in the General Cell Phone Forum about that so no need to discuss or recommend phones here in the Intro forum.

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