My Sony/Ericssson K700i is out of contract next month so I'm shopping around for a new phone and thought I'd take the plunge with 3G. Anyone else got one? The first requirement is it has to be free. I'm a high tariff user (my work gives me £30 towards the monthly bill) so I can usually get everything but bleeding-edge for free from sites like www.mobiles.co.uk. Can you hook them up to your computer for wireless? With 384kbps download you could do some decent surfing on it. Or do you have to buy a 3G card specifically for the computer to do this? What phone? I'm thinking about the Motorola A1000. Its a bit clunky but with 3G you want a decent size screen to watch movie downloads. For a more traditional type of phone the Sony/Ericsson V600i looks pretty sexy. I assume all the stuff like 1.3 mega pixel camera, MMC storage cards, USB connectivity is standard now.
Depends on the service provider. The phone you would be using would be a WCDMA UMTS phone. And the 384k bps rates are under optimal conditions, you won't get real high speed data until HSDPA comes out. For what you want, it sounds like a fit with the combination PDA/cell-phones. If your primary use is data and computer access, the service providers are pushing the computer cards. Check out your service provider plans. I can't say much more, since I'm in the US. While there isn't any widespread UMTS roll out here yet, we do have Sprint and Verizon with with CDMA EV-DO.
I got one of the new 3G phones last September and it has been in for repair 3 times already and needs to go again, as the mic has now started to play up. Getting football highlights is a good point about them, otherwise the extra stuff you get really is other videos (news etc), and video calling. Plus it also depends if you are in a 3G area or its just like a normal mobile phone.