whapakk.

I remembered just this afternoon that I had to buy a new phone for myself. I’ve been having difficulties keeping my postpaid plan within my limits, and I felt like I really needed to go back to (or at least have an alternate) prepaid service. As I previously mentioned, I received a Smart Buddy prepaid SIM card from Ad Congress, so all I needed was a phone to house it.

It also came into consideration that I have been meaning to buy a cheapo MP3 player, because since my PSP got stolen sometime last year, I have been unable to soundtrip while on-the-go (save for when I’m driving, of course). So I decided that what I’d be buying was a phone that has decent music-playing capability, feels right (mainly referring to the keypad), looks better the Sony Ericsson G502 (which I’m currently using), and somewhat cheap.

The Samsung M3510 I almost bought.

First phone I considered buying was the Samsung M3510. I thought it looked nice, had the basic functions I’ve been looking for, and was cheap enough that I felt like buying it right away (thankfully, I didn’t). I was about to ask the salesman to show me the actual unit before I buy it for real when I realized I haven’t checked the phone’s Nokia counterpart yet: the Nokia 5130 XpressMusic.

Comparing the two phones by looks, I couldn’t decide: they both looked the part of the cheap-funky music phone; checking the features of both phones confused me more, as they were almost exactly the same in terms of the basic specs (camera, screen size and resolution, keys, capacity, etc.). The only apparent difference was that the 5130 costs 300 bucks more than the M3510, but even that’s not much of a difference.

I always feel giddy about boxes like this; it means I've something new to play with.

I decided to go for the Nokia phone. I’ve been a Nokia user for years and I’m pretty used to navigating their menus and pressing away on the keypad for those SMS messages. I’ve been using Sony Ericsson for a year now and I kind of missed the Nokia interface; also, I trust the phone won’t break down on me soon, as all the Nokia phones I’ve used before were good for several years before I decided to replace them with newer, updated models.

This marks my return to prepaid mobile service! Hello, telephone?

This means that starting today, I’ll be using two phones (again): the new one on Smart Buddy’s prepaid service (I’ve totally turned my back on Globe, what about that) and the other, older one on Smart Gold. I plan to buy a bigger (badder) phone soon, probably a Blackberry or an iPhone, but rethinking it made me realize it’s not an urgent need yet. So, for a while, I’ll probably stick to my G502 and my 5130 XpressMusic.

Trying out the XpressMusic function: so far, so good.

Now, on to the best part. I said that I wanted a phone that would function as a decent MP3 player. The Nokia 5130 XpressMusic gives me that and I was pleasantly surprised at the volume it played on speakers: it was louder than I expected and that’s a huge plus in my book. Sure, the 1GB capacity sucks, but that’s just what comes with it. I can always buy an 8GB micro SD should I need more space (which I will, probably).

I’m liking XpressMusic so much that in the spirit of Nuffnang SG’s recent blog contest for Nokia, I’ve made a mock playlist of song titles that’d make up a weirdly stupid story:

Let's make some babies later; for now, I want to spend time with my new phone.

What next? I still want to buy a Blackberry or an iPhone, but I think that can wait. I don’t really want to spend some more after all the purchases I’ve made the past couple of weeks.