Tonight was a fun night of experimenting with web stuff.

I'm in London this week, and this morning I got an email from the office that they changed my mobile plan so I could use mobile internet abroad for a flat fee per day, and since I have a fancy phone now it was playtime tonight!

I turned on my iPod, left the hotel and set out to do some sightseeing. Took the tube to the Embankment station and took a cliche picture of the Big Ben. Using the 'upload to flickr' feature of my phone, I uploaded it to my flickr stream.

Roughly 7 minutes later the upload finished and I was able to twitter about my accomplishment. The reason it took 7 minutes was that my phone had switched from HSDPA to GPRS, which is pretty sluggish, and the fact that my phone's cam is 5MP.

I got hungry, and used Google Mobile Maps to find the Hard Rock Cafe (always a nice place to dine when you're not with company), and the way to get there.

By the time I passed the large Pepsi Thingee at Trocadero, I had found out that my phone can scale down the image before posting to flickr, so my picture of the Pepsi Thingee uploaded a lot faster.

At trocadero I used an underpass to cross a road, at which point my phone not only disconnected, but completely crashed. I had to take out the battery to reset it.

Anyway, on to the Hard Rock Cafe.

I arrived at the spot where the Hard Rock Cafe was supposed to be according to Google, but there was only a really small street and I didn't see anything resembling an HRC. But a closer look revealed a small door with a Hard Rock Cafe logo in the back of a sort of alcove. 'Wow', I thought, 'must be the smallest HRC ever. Without Google Maps I would never have found this'.

So I went in and about 2 steps inside I encountered a guy, sitting on a staircase eating fries. Hmm, this must be the weirdest HRC I've encountered so far.

He looked as stunned at me as I looked at him, and after an awkward silence I said:

"Are they closed or what?"
"Closed? You want to eat?"
"Eh, duh!"
"Sure we're open. but USE THE FRONT DOOR!"
"Ah, eh, hmm..." (quick! think of an excuse that doesn't make you look foolish!) "Google Maps sent me here!"
"Well, Sir, then Google Maps IS WRONG."

I walked around the block, had a lovely dinner, twittered some more, checked up on my email and eventually used Google Maps to find my way back to the hotel.

So it was a nice mobile-assisted night.

And now I'm here in my hotel room, typing this post in a local textfile because internet at the hotel doesn't work and the building seems to block my cellphone signal.

Some drawbacks: The battery of my phone, which was full when I left, was nearly empty by the time I got back. And on my laptop I noticed that the pictures I took were way more blurry than I could tell on the mobile phone screen.

But all-in-all, I think the mobile web is fun. In particular the popular web 2.0 sites do a decent job of providing a proper mobile version of their services.

A few people on twitter advised me some alternative mobile software (mobypicture) that should make it even easier, so I'm going to try that out on my next sightseeing-with-phone tour. I'll try to use some more websites next time as well, such as a website that can plot my route using google maps, and try uploading to youtube from the phone. It would be nice if there was a site that combines google maps, twitter, youtube and flickr. Ideas anyone?

Since my phone broke down a few months ago, I've been temporarily using a Nokia 6021. This is about the most basic phone you can get: you can make phonecalls and send sms messages, and that's about it. But at least I had something, while I was selecting a new phone.

I had a few requirements:

• I want to use the phone as a modem for my Macbook Pro, via Bluetooth

• I want to read my email on it, preferably using UMTS or HSDPA
• It should have a decent size (fit in the pockets of my jeans)
• It should be reliable
• It should have a decent camera (my experience with cellphone cams is that they usually suck)
• I want to check my Google Calendar on the road

I could wait for the iPhone to become available in the Netherlands. Most important drawback however is that it features only Wifi and Edge to go online. I don't know about the US, but over here Edge is like going back in time. Also, they support only one operator, and it looks like it's not going to be the operator my company uses.

I also had a look at several HTC models. Their Smartphone range looks really nice and I have about 3 colleagues using HTC phones. I didn't buy an HTC in the end because I read many reviews reporting crashes, freezes and other instabilities. Not all users are affected by this, but since I will be using it a lot, chances are that I would be encountering issues.

I finally ended up with a Nokia N95. 3 of my colleagues recommended it, and it satisfies all of the above requirements. On top of that, it's just a pretty damn cool phone.

After having played with it a few hours, I have a few preliminary remarks.

Plus

• The interface is pretty smooth, and even though menu options aren't always intuitive, it's fairly easy to use without consulting the manual. (but then again, I'm a geek)

• It does everything I expect it to.
• It has a great camera (5 megapixels!)
• The coolest thing I did sofar is installing Google Mobile Maps with the built in GPS. It doesn't just look nice, it works great too.

Minus

• Connectivity is a bit confusing. It supports so many protocols that it's not always clear to me what it's using, if it's connected or not etc. (But maybe this is something I still have to get used to, I'm not very familiar yet with phones that go online.)

• The email client is very limited, I can't use IMAP folders, and my inbox is fairly unusable without filtering, given the amount of spam and automated emails I get. (Suggestions anyone?)
• The main screen isn't as customizable as I'd like (or I haven't found the proper settings yet).
• It's pretty expensive.

It's too early to say anything about battery life etc. yet, but with my iPod and Tom Tom I'm already used to docking stuff at night. If it lasts throughout the day, I will be satisfied.

So far, I'm pretty happy with it. Now that I think about it though, I haven't made a single phone call yet :-). So should you call this a phone? You can apparently play for hours without using the primary feature it was made for in the first place.

Oh, one last thing, or actually 2.

One: it's strange that a phone that runs Symbian OS instead of Windows Mobile, supports only Windows for their firmware update tool. Had to use VMWare under OSX to get my firmware updated.

Two: why do phones still not properly deal with moving contacts from one phone to the other? Sure, it supports bluetooth, wifi, infrared etc. to sync contacts. However, to sync them, you need to have your SIM card in both phones (even though the contacts are on the phone itself), but I only have a single card. (Luckily, a bit of SIM card juggling and Apple's iSync on the Macbook did the trick).