So last month a friendly chick named Kate contacted me from Womworld/Nokia, offering me one of their smart phones (the e71x) to try out for a few weeks. I don’t usually respond to unsolicited pitches, but my inner gadget geek  was excited to mess around with someone else’s phone and see what this 3G talk was all about. Since there were no strings attached, no money offered, and no review demanded, I decided this was a pitch I’d relent on.

People who know me in real life, especially my family, will tell you about two of my annoying habits: Picking up, and subsequently getting lost in, any magazine lying about the premises; and picking up, and subsequently screwing around with, your new cell phone. It’s just a thing I do. Give it here, lemme look. Same applies to cameras, Kindles, and laptops. I’m very careful, and I like to think I’m considerate, but put it away if you don’t want my paws all over it.

So I put my paws on this e71x, which is like a smartphone for business people. It has a camera and e-mail and messaging and GPS: everything most phones have these days. It’s cute, a good palm size. I liked the camera (practically double the pixels of my Samsung Alias) and how clicky the keyboard was. I liked the shift key on the Qwerty keyboard.

But actually using it made me feel like a Neanderthal. I couldn’t figure out where to find where my phone number was, or how many minutes I’d used, or how much data I’d consumed. Maybe it’s because I’ve spent the last *counts on fingers* 12+ years using Macs. Or it could be the five years I spent organizing, designing, and presenting information to readers. But in terms of usability, I thought the user interface was clunky, that navigating the menus was awkward and weird, and that the icons had gross names like “App. Mgr.”

Admittedly, my experience with anything other than Samsung/Verizon phones is limited to the point of nonexistent, so maybe this is de rigeur. Maybe I’m being too fussy. But I hope maybe in the next iteration the software can match the hardware.

(p.s. my working title was “It’s not an iPhone, but …”.)

That said, I’m glad Nokia gave me the chance to try it out. My first cell phone — in 1999, I think it was? was a Nokia, and I have very fond memories of it.