9500 first impressions

First, out-of-box experience was excellent. Was on www and email within a
minute (Voda UK). SIM seemed to store all the settings (contrast 6600 a year
ago, took a weekend to create connections and accounts - long before Nokia
made them available on their site). User manual miles better than usual
Nokia standard, yet still no screenshots.

Screen is bright, sharp, has good zoom features. QWERTY keyboard is, well,
small, but no more challenging than BlackBerry. Some commentators have
criticised lack of T9 but hell - you've got a full keypad inside. The
external keypad (they call it the "cover phone") is nicely spaced with good
feel.

The app suite tries hard to work like Windows and pretty much succeeds. Most
users will probably focus on Web and Messaging - both accessible from hot
keys - and they work fast and great, very smooth implementation (I never
used a 9210). Browser is lovely - drop-down boxes etc. properly supported.
There's an "issue" with importing Contacts from Outlook, covered at
www.9500communicator.com. Still possible but so fiddly I ended up
Bluetoothing them one by one. PC Suite much more robust than previous
versions.

PDF viewer is a great app which is bundled (the version on the CD didn't
install but the version at www.nokia.com worked fine (same with Bounce, nice
wide screen implementation here).

Word and Excel lite are cute but you lose some formatting on the round trip
to/from PC.

And beware if you stuff in a MMC with .SIS files already installed on it -
the 9500 will try to install them by default.

Have not yet used WiFi or camera.

Think of this device as a two thumb tool and you'll not be disappointed.
Great speakerphone. At 200g+, will I take it everywhere? Dunno. Hope this
helps.