Upcoming Nokia E71 and E66 I would consider to replace my N76 – but most probably won’t

I myself use two cell phones – my main one being a N76 with T-mobile, my secondary phone being n HTC Mogul for Sprint. It’s a good set up because I do my fast, phone functions on my main phone, and keep the Mogul for my secondary, data intensive functions. The N76 is nice, but I’ve been wanting to replace it for a while with something better.

Nokia’s got two phones coming out, the Nokia E66 ( Engadget’s Post ) and the Nokia E71 ( Engadget’s Post , Engadget Mobile’s Post ) and though they look pretty tempting, I think I’ll hold off on them. Engadget’s got a post on both of these phones via a hands on vid, but I like the comments here discussing the E71. EngadgetMobile’s got the same story w/ hands on vids here, but the comments are pretty dead.

I would give the E66 consideration if it has or gets updated with a T-mobile 3G band. That discussion was briefly started over in the comments in Engadget’s story on the E71, but nothing new after my post. I don’t want a QWERTY keypad on my main phone so that means the E71 would be out for me (even with T-mobile 3G).

My friend Archie wants to get a new phone for T-mobile so he may in the same boat as me.

My cousin Jon wants to replace his refurbished Dash he recently had replaced by T-mobile (he’s been using the Dash since Spring 2007 though). He’s leaning towards the BlackBerry Bold, but I’m telling him to lean towards the E71. Especially since it runs Symbian and that’s my mobile OS of choice. Plus, I could find games and cool apps for him as I dive further into both my N76 and my wife’s N82. One of the driving forces on what choice Jon should make would be which of the phones – the BlackBerry Bold or the Nokia E71 – will have T-mobile’s 3G bands in the future. I made a post over here asking that, but no responses yet.

My friend Mo wants to replace his *cough* Razr with a new phone, but stick with AT&T. I know he’s eying the new iPhone, but I think he’d be a good candidate for either of these phones since (I believe) both phones have AT&T 3G bands.

My cousin Shiraz wants to leave his Motorola Q with Verizon and go with the new iPhone w/ AT&T. I know he doesn’t want T-mobile because of T-mobile’s spotty coverage in Albany where he lives, but I think he should still consider one of these also before biting the bullet on the iPhone 3G.

I’m a big fan of Mac, but don’t think the iPhone’s the best thing out there.

One of the comment’s on Engadget’s story on the Nokia E66 complain about the lack of a subsidy on this phone, but I talked about my run around method to save some money here in this comment. I posted a link to that comment in a similar discussion over on EngadgetMobile’s post on the E71.

If you’re with Verizon, well…

You got the Nokia 6205 coming out (my fave comments are this one and teej’s response to this one). I chimed in too with this comment.

Update: The E71 is now available in North America (as of July 21st). Within the comments on Engadget’s post on this subject, I added onto bachviet’s wish for a T-mobile USA 3G version in my comment here.

Update on 8/25/2008: The Engadget has a post here on suggestions to update the E71. The comments are pretty helpful in getting an idea on what the phone is capable of and what its not.

Update on 9/2/2008: Engadget’s got a new post here discussing the E66 now being carried in Flagship stores. The article says the phone is $540 from them, and on a related note, there’s a comment from ian mcgrady that says the E71 is $490.

Both this comment & This other comment from TareX make me want to buy the phone (as I said in my post below one of his comments). I need T-mobile compatible 3G though.