in the 8 months that I’ve had it, it’s been repaired 7 times. For a variety of problems from the camera totally failing, to the screen blanking out (which happened twice), software problems (twice), stuck slide and another problem which i can’t remember.

yes, it looks great in the shop, and the first few hours you have it in your hands. Use it for a few days and you’ll see how terrible the ui of the phone is. Coming from a sony ericsson, I was shocked to see how terrible the design of the software in the 6280 was. Some operations were just so troublesome!

I haven’t had problems with the random reboots, but i did have the well-known “test mode” problem and “Phone Restricted” problems when I first acquired it. After a few times being repaired, its been alright so far.

The build quality is rubbish. After a couple of months the whole phone felt as if it was about to fall apart. The slide was rattling like hell(especially putting it down in a moving car). The silver edging looked like it was about to fall off.

Having used phones from sony ericsson(k700,z520,k800) and nokia n70, (and a few older ones), this has got to be the worse phone i’ve ever touched. I’ve never heard of any phone with this number of problems. Sure, the N70 has its own problems like the restarts when using bluetooth, or watching a video in realplayer, but after some updates it works great.

The 6288 doesnt seem any better. A relation has one which has a slide that feels like its about to fall off. A friend has one that the slide rail inside has rusted and its impossible to open the slide properly. Sounds similar to my phone to me.

Doesn’t seem that the problems are related to phones from any partiicular operator in any country. im all the way in singapore on the singapore telecom network and my phone was purchased directly from them. The 2 6288s mentioned are both on mobileone singapore.

Thought I’d want to try a nokia when i got this; the screen was fantastic compared to any se at that time. Nokia has totally let me down and I will not be considering a nokia for my next phone (which i am getting in about a week or two).

As for my argument about modifying your behaviour to take advantage of a deal — it was a general point. If the deal really does save you money without costing you any effort, then great.

Maybe I should look into PAYG deals, but I’d want to be sure that I didn’t lose any benefits like the phone insurance — and being sure would take some effort. Agh!

Hm, your cost analyses need to factor in a generous rate for your own time, effort and angst. I rate my time pretty highly — I’d rather spend £20 than spend half an hour doing stuff I don’t want to do. And time spent worrying and thinking about things I don’t want to think about costs even more.

(This is the argument I use when confronted with gas or electricity salespeople who want me to switch suppliers so I can save £12 a year, and it completely confounds them.)

Ah, well in my case, I’m saving about twice that every MONTH! But then, I didn’t go via a salesperson, I got an “online” account

I pay Orange about £35 a month and I get 100 minutes and 100 free texts. That’s what I use so that’s what I asked for

Er, I hate to break the news to you, but you’re paying 15p per text and call! Below, you tell me that “no-one is actually paying for calls at 10p per minute”.
Well, people on PAYG plans are, and you’d be better off with one of those.

and they gave me a customised (Orange Value Promise) plan — I couldn’t be bothered with their daft animal-named plans.

That includes about the amount of 3G data I use (for surfing and TomTom traffic) and (the best bit) Orange Care, which is worth the £4 a month to avoid worry and paid for itself several times over when I went swimming in the sea with my N80 in my pocket.

Again, you’re actually paying about £25 per month for those – £10 of your plan will be calls. (BTW, there’s no such thing as a “free phone/minute/text” – which is why companies aren’t allowed to call them that any more).

In your situation I’d have had a phone cross-shipped to me overnight.

That’s a benefit, but not one worth £300 a year to me.

The other thing is that all these so-called freebies aren’t really free. A lot of that £1602 is in stuff you can’t use (calls you don’t actually make). If you modify your behaviour to take advantage of a deal, that actually *costs* you in terms of time, effort, and worrying about whether you’re making the most of your deal or not. Also, it’s in no sense *worth* what they say, because no-one is actually paying for calls at 10p a minute, and no-one is really selling calls at 10p a minute (they’re all free or part of some deal or other).

I’ve saved more on my home phone bill by making all my calls from my mobile, so I’m having trouble seeing how you worked that one out!
I’ve got two days left in this month, and I have 18 texts left from my 250, and 7 minutes left from my 400.

The correct way to compare deals is by calculating each one’s value to *you*. For that you need to know roughly how you use your phone and how you value your own time, effort and worry. (I actually think you had it about right until you were swayed by the £60 and the freebies).

The freebies were part of the package – the £60? Just for playing hardball? That’s my job as a consumer – it cost me 5 minutes.

The backlight thing is wierd — on my phone the app can control the backlight, so, e.g. TomTom has a setting for backlight always-on, or backlight always-on-when-the-phone-is-connected-to-power.

Yeah. I think Nokia might be in trouble over this backlight thing – after telling everyone that it was due to EU regulations, myself and lots of others in the forums put a lot of sustained pressure on Nokia to name the regulation. They now say that’s not the case, it was a mistake, it’s just their choice to have random backlight times!

Personally, I think it was just shoddy development – they must be a little ashamed of the 6280!