Seven Days With… [insert device here]

I’m working on a new series of features, Seven Days With…. I want to put a whole series of different mobile phones into the handsets of our team here and SMS Text News — and also some of the readers.

The concept is simple. We’ll take a handset, put it into the hands of, for example, N95-lover James Whatley, and see what he makes of it. The key question is what kind of devices to test out. Most manufacturers are usually game for lending us a unit to try out for a week or so, therefore I reckon the world could, possibly, be our oyster.

I’ve written to HTC and asked if we can check out a Touch Dual or Touch Cruise. I don’t want to just limit it to handsets only — For example, I’ve also written to Bell Canada to ask if we can check out their Unlimited Data offering. We’ll aim to try and do at least one a month, possibly more.

These aren’t reviews, I don’t want to publish ‘it’s got 8gig of ram and a wotsit processor‘ style analysis. That’s not what we’re about at SMS Text News. Other sites — IntoMobile, for example, do a far better job at that. I want to know what the device is like. I want to read personal and real-life examples of how the device performed across 7 days. That means swapping out your main handset to the review unit for the week, not carrying it as a second handset or playing with it for 10 minutes before putting it back in the box. I did 48-hours with the HTC Touch last year and really noticed a substantial difference between my before and after opinions (I was impressed, very impressed).

Devices on my list to do a Seven Days With:
- The new JCB Phone
- Some HTCs
- A Vodafone Simply phone
- One of the new Sagems
- LG’s Viewty
- Vodafone’s new USB data stick
- Nokia N95 8GB (arriving shortly)

What else do you think we should add to the list?

And are you up for doing a Seven Days With feature for us?

Mail me at ewan@smstextnews.com or post a reply here.