T-Mobile and the Nokia 5310 XpressMusic

Anyone who's been following my Twitter posts knows exactly how sick I was over the T-Mobile Dash. The way it leaked memory like a sieve causing you to reboot the phone several times a day, the poor audio quality on the videos, the rapidly deteriorating battery life, and inability to play streaming video were just a few of the reasons I hated it so. (I'm not the only one who had problems.) Well, what ended up killing it was the fact that it would randomly shut off during any type of over-the-air data transfer or any phone call that took longer than 2 minutes. (The phone would just go black, not actually go through a power down T-Mobile logo love fest cycle.)

The best part of all? I got swindled into signing a 2-year contract extension to upgrade so I could get $100 knocked off the price plus a $50 rebate that T-Mobile never honored for me. All of the functional problems I discovered weren't until several months later and at that point T-Mobile had no obligation to assist me with that T-Mobile Dash. How can a company look its customers in the eye and feel good about signing them into a contract so they can get a deep discount on a piece of technology that won't survive up 25-50% of the contract period?

So after one cut off conversation too many last Thursday, it was time to go look for another phone, as I'm locked into a T-Mobile contract for the next several months and have no desire to reward the pirates at that company with a severance check for customer no-service.

My premise was simple: I needed a phone that could run the Google Java applications so I could check my Gmail account and look at maps while out and about. I also wanted Bluetooth compatibility, a camera that could shoot video as well as stills, and I did not want a Windows Mobile device as that operating system is about as reliable as a dollar store diaper.

So in all my searching and comparing reviews on CNet, I came up with the Nokia 5310 XpressMusic as my phone of choice, weighing in with a $200 price tag, and set off to the T-Mobile store the very next day to buy it.

Apparently this is a pretty new phone, and I knew more about this particular model than the sales representative who helped me. The first thing I did when I took it out of the box was try out some music. Worked very well, and the music came out of the speaker very crisp and clear.

The next thing I played with was the camera phone. Also very easy and the quality of the audio was a night-and-day improvement over the T-Mobile Dash. The video looked how all cell phone video quality looks to me - grainy and dithered, but you could at least see what's going on.

Now it was time to put the phone through the real paces. I sent a picture message to a friend. Worked very well. Sent and received some text messages. I liked the intuitive "guess what you're trying to type" text entering method, as it saved me from having to push the 7 button four times just to get an "S".

Now I was ready to install my Gmail and Google Maps applications. I went to m.google.com and clicked on the download link for Gmail. Google detected my phone and the link downloaded the newest version of the Gmail Java application. So far so good!

After the application downloaded, I gave it a whirl. I was suddenly presented with an error message: "Application access set to not allowed." Seemed like it would be easy to fix; all I'd have to do is just go into the options and change a setting for this application.

I clicked on Options, then scrolled down the menu and saw where it said "Application access." Now we're really cooking! Er, but wait... it's grayed out. No matter, T-Mobile certainly wouldn't be criminal enough to cripple a feature on a device I paid them full price for. Furthermore, I know T-Mobile in their wise and sound judgment would surely allow me as a customer currently subscribed to the "Total Internet Access" package to grant 3rd party applications access to the data network. But alas, this was not so.

I can't stomach anymore sarcasm. Truth is, I knew damn well what was going on as soon as I saw the option was grayed out and I got pissed. Really pissed. Shouldn't those thieves and villains at T-Horrible be forced to disclose when they've disabled a feature on the phone in a manner that is easily visible? If you're buying a product that has set capabilities, as a customer I would expect those capabilities to be there when I open the box and use the product.

The story gets better. For kicks I clicked on "Application access" anyways just to see what would happen, and I received the "Not available for this application" error. Now it was time to call T-Mobile's Technically Challenged Support department.

After saying a couple of prayers and having sadtrombone.com loaded and ready for comical relief, I dialed up T-Mobile and was connected to a representative after a short few minute wait. I explained very clearly what the problem was and that I needed to know how to unlock the "Application access" feature for Java applications. The T-Mobile representative's solution? The phone will magically unlock itself after 48 hours and I will be able to use all the Java applications my little heart desires.

And when I expressed disbelief, the representative offered me clear and convincing proof: my t-mobile.com profile still displayed that I was using a T-Mobile Dash. Wow. It wasn't because I hadn't logged in and updated which phone I owned, it was because the magical towers of T-Mobile haven't detected my new phone.

After it was clear to me I was talking to a brick wall, I decided to go another route: online chat support. I had the pleasure of typing to Sanja, who was very polite in his cut and paste conversation. After diligently typing out the problem and my request, I was told flatly: T-Mobile does not support any 3rd party applications on their phones. What an odd response, as they probably make a fortune selling 3rd party applications on T-Zones. And if I didn't like the answer? Take the phone back within 14 days I was told.

The problem with taking this phone back is the rest of the device lineup is so pathetic, I don't think there's a viable choice I would want to exchange for. I don't have much longer to go on my T-Mobile contract, so I think I will just cancel my Total Internet Service package and tough out the last few months of T-Horrible, then move to a company that makes me feel like a valued customer and not a moronic sheep.

If there's a phone that works really well in unlocked mode or if you're in love with your mobile carrier, I'd love to hear any suggestions you might have.

And if you want to know anything else about the Nokia 5310 XpressMusic, I'd be more than happy to answer your questions in the comments. I will point out it has weak e-mail support (no IMAP, all messages are downloaded via SMS service) and the web browser does not present non-mobile sites well at all. Other than that, it's a decent phone. T-Mobile just crippled it, that's all.