3G is not all it's cracked up to be

Faster data, sure, but still not fast enough to be used seriously unless you have HSDPA and not many operators are offering that at a decent price yet.

I find that football scores, etc, can be looked up quickly enough on the BBC WAP site over GPRS - you don't need UMTS or HSDPA for that (or WiFi).

UMTS coverage is also not as complete as GSM and given the way it works there is far more chance of dropped calls, etc. Therefore, even though I am in a situation where I can pretty much choose which phone I want for free, I chose a 2G one, as it has WiFi, Windows Mobile (great for office documents) and a better in-built GPS receiver than most 3G phones. And looks cooler.

One nice trick by the way - I run Skype on it at home over the WiFi network. Would be a cool trick anyway if I paid for my phone bill.

Posted By: Steve in Holland, May 1, 14:28:41