Obligatory free phone blog

As I mentioned last month, I was offered a free Nokia 6682 smart phone for the simple price of blogging with and about it. I'm fulfilling the last half of that obligation today, and will do the former just as soon as I figure out how. The whole time I wrote this post, I waited for the USB cable drivers to install themselves, but something's not working. Ugh, technology.

It's a sweet little phone, I must admit. It has still and video photo capabilities, a video editor, internet connectivity, e-mail and instant messaging, it can play MP3s and act as a voice recorder, it has games - oh yah, and it's a telephone, too.

Here's the whole package I received from Matchstick.ca, the buzz marketing specialists who are working with Nokia on this campaign:

There's a Bluetooth wireless headset in there, extra memory, and a whole bunch of other widgets I am only now beginning to understand. So you can understand how truly state-of-the-art all this is for me, here is my former cell phone. I think we bought it around 2001.

It has text messaging - which I've never used because I was too cheap to pay for voice mail and call display, let alone a data package - and that's about it. When I brought the new Nokia 6682 into the Rogers outlet to have them help me transfer the account, the enthusiastic young woman who served me said that Rogers will no longer even be supporting this type of phone after this year, so the arrival of a free replacement was more timely than I realized.

She was very impressed with the Nokia 6682, and even moreso with the concept that I got it for free, just for blogging about and with it. She said it was one of nicer phones she had seen, and enthusiastically showed it to several other employees and even a familiar customer while she helped me transfer my cell account.

I was a little worried that my grandfathered cell account, originally activated through a no-longer-available corporate plan back in 1998, wouldn't support this new phone, but I had no problems. I'm going to buy a small data transfer package (an extra $3 a month) so I can do a little bit of mobile blogging, but I was disappointed to see that Blogger doesn't support true mobile blogging for customers outside the US. It may just be time to cut the apron strings and move to hosting my own blog, but that's a post for another day.

I find the phone very easy to use, even for a Luddite like me. The phone itself and the camera features are fairly intuitive. I haven't used much of the Web connectivity features yet because I haven't upgraded my phone account for the data package, but it's fun to play with. I set the ring tone to the sound of an old ringing phone (think of the heavy black rotary dial ones) as a tribute to my utter lack of familiarity with any of the phone's features.

It would have been nice if it were a flip phone, or at least came with a protective case, because the display screen is already a little scratched just from being carried around in my purse, but that's my only complaint. There are features I know I'll never use on a regular basis, but it's still fun to have them. And with time, I'm sure I'll start using some of the other features simply because I have them.

For now, I'm still trying to install the software that will liberate the photos I've taken from the camera. It's been twenty minutes and the USB drivers seem to be hung, so I'll have to go back and reinstall the software, I think. More later when I figure it out!