For the past year and a half or so, my phone has been a Sony Ericsson T300. It came cheap when I upgraded my T-Mobile plan from “Prepaid” to “Get More,” such that the total rebate amount exceeded the amount I spent on buying the plan and phone off Amazon. I got what I paid for, however: a slow phone with poor signal reception, hard-to-press buttons, loose and wonky proprietary charge/headset ports, an extremely SMS-unfriendly interface, and a tendency to fly apart on impact (after multiple falls, admittedly). That, plus a Communicam attachment which snapped decent photos but took forever to upload them to anywhere, made the phone more curse than “communicator.”

When the T300’s charge port started consistently not working properly, I decided it was time for a change. I was torn between splurging on a Treo with PalmOS, or going back to my roots in a Nokia, but this AskMefi thread convinced me to go the Nokia way. The N6600 could perform most personal organizer functions I needed for half the price — but the most prominent disadvantage was that it had a keypad rather than a stylus or QWERTY keyboard. But hey, I’m Filipino; the numeric keypad is second nature.

T-Mobile had just phased out the Nokia 6600, and they were no longer in stock at the local retail store. The up side was that 6600s were going for much cheaper on eBay than ever before, so it wasn’t long before I had landed a decent secondhand unit and transferred my SIM to it.

Coming soon: thoughts on my first month with the Nokia 6600. In the meantime, I’m preparing my battered S/E T300 for a pity listing on eBay.

Update: Nokia 6600 review.