I used Truphone before, but it was never retained on my phones as the call quality wasn’t that great. But I was very impressed with the call today and I may keep Truphone around for a little while longer this time. Plus I’ve 10 bucks of credit left that I need to use up to!

I’m not going to write a huge review of the Asus as there’s a ton of those out there or the 3 broadband dongle either, but I’m very impressed with them both so far and can’t wait to actually take them on the road.

I’m traveling to Paris tomorrow with work and thought about leaving the work laptop behind and taking the Asus, I only need access to email and as we’ve now moved to Exchange we’ve now got OWA which is great. So there’s no need to lug a huge Dell. but being the corporate citizen I’ll leave the Asus behind, plus I don’t want to confuse the guys at the airport having two laptops.

Oh I nearly forgot the track pad on the Asus is awesome, you can use two fingers swiping down it to scroll down and there’s a few other tricks with it to, such as ‘pinching’ to zoom in and out…. it’s cool.

This is a great piece of news, Fring on the tablet. I’ve used Fring on several S60 device and it’s great, it’s the one and only IM client and VoIP client you need. Now it’s available on the N800 fantastic, as soon as I get 5 mins I’ll be installing it and letting it run all day.

My Proporta Mobile USB charger just turned up and in the package was an Earl Grey Tea Bag!

The device is pretty neat too, it used mini usb to charge, so I can carry just one mini usb cable around (the same one as used to connect the Phone to the PC) and I can use my CA-100 mini USB charge to connect my N95 to the Proporta device as well as using it to connect to my PC. So the only bit of extra kit I have to carry is the white unit itself, great.

Oh and thanks for the drink Proporta!

The other reason I was looking was, that I’ve been thinking of picking up a 9" Asus EeePC, and pariing that with the mobile broadband dongle would provide a pretty awesome mobile too. Anyone else tried this or using this setup?…any pitfalls?

Now if only I could remember who 3 uses as it’s roaming partner when there’s no 3 service, it used to be O2?

Anyway, call waiting isn’t on, so therefore I don’t expect to hear beeps whilst on a call, unless, it s voicemail being left or an sms arriving. But today I’ve had a couple of the message arriving beeps during a call, only for me to check when the call has ended for the message to find nothing there, so it’s a bit of a phantom alert. I’ve no idea what’s going on, but if it continues, the device will get a hard reset *#7370# to wipe it clean and start again, it’s a tad annoying to say the least.

I wish I could keep it and use it as my business phone as the battery lasts longer than the E61i as well. I’ve managed 4 days with still some juice left when only using the E71 for voice and texts. It lasted for two days solid no problems with Mail for exchange and Jaiku S60 client running both with permanent Internet connections from 7am till 11pm, so the battery is pretty awesome

Could I use the E71 as my personal phone, no, I don’t think I could, for me my personal phone, should be a phone first and then a camera. The E71 is a communications device first and a phone second and a camera third. Don’t get me wrong the E71 is an amazing device, but it’s got the E-Series moniker for a reason, it’s a business device first and foremost.

There are a few things I’d like to see flow into other firmware versions, not just the E-Series and they are, in no order, the bluetooth key, holding down * is great, the new type and contacts appear on the screen functionality of the E71 and E66, and the better calendar and the better implementation of imap idle. What they can keep is the icon’s I didn’t mind them at first, but I grew to dislike them more recently, a very minor point of more to do with my taste that functionality or design.

The E71 will have to get packed up soon and I’ll miss it as the E61i will come back into service and I’ve noticed how slow that device is now, nevermind, maybe a reset and a fresh new BP-4L will give it a new lease of life!

So how does this work for me, I register my mobile number with Rebtel and they provide me with a fairly local National number to call (I get a huge bundle of free national rate calls), they then also provide a, in my case, Spanish number for my Dad to call which routes back to my mobile.

So for me, it cost my just a few pence with Rebtel for the interconnect and Spanish local leg out. So I just call the 0151 number and it starts ringing in Spain. It works the same in reverse for my Dad, he’s been given a local Spanish number +34 for me. So he rings that number to call me as opposed to calling the UK (and a Mobile) directly. So his end he pays for a national rate call only. I pick up the cost as he’s using my number of the interconnect and the UK local leg to me, but again this is pence.

So the calls are dirt cheap that’s great, but the great thing about it, the next time I want to call my Dad I just dial his 0151 number, no need for Wi-Fi, no need for an Internet connection to initiate the call, no need to install anything,  just dial the number and you’re done.

So Rebtel ticks two boxes for me, hugely cheap calls to Spain and a massively simple means of actually setting up the call, amazing.

Now that’s great for Nokia in the long run as Norm has taken his first steps into smartphone land with the iPhone, he’s realized that he needs his phone to do a little more than just voice and text. Now what I’m thinking here is what a lot of people will do is take those first steps into smart phone land and realize that they can do so much more with a smart phone than they imagined and that they’ll hit the limits of the Phone but not of their smartphone curiosity and step up (ahem) to a Nokia smartphone.

Anyway, I thought I’d throw that into the Nokia iPhone debate that’s raging right now, it’s a very weak argument, but I’m sure there will be a handful of people that will enjoy the first moments of smartphone ownership and take the plunge with a more powerful and open device as a result.