Having reached the end of my 18month contract with Orange, it was time to look around for a free upgrade. Currently though, my pickyness of phones meant i only really had 3 options available.

Get a new phone and sim that isn’t a nokia and sell it retaining the sim for my n95
Get an N95-8gb.
Wait until October for the N96

The N96 was very tempting, but it’ll probably be over a year for Orange to finish tinkering with it, leaving it useless. Plus, its primary bonus id the builtin DVB tuner, which be very unlikly to get a signal anywhere I would want to use it anyway.

As my phones flash is now broken, I’ve decided to plump for the N95-8Gb. Very much like my current phone, but sleek and black and faster to respond.

A quick phone call to Orange this morning, and voila, the new phone should be with me tomorrow morning. As I rang to request a PAC code to leave Orange, they also managed to throw am extra loyalty discount at me which should reduce my bills by another £10 a month. enough for a few more beers on the weekend.

I guess I’ll be playing with it for most of the next few weeks, tweaking software, setting up WiFi settings, etc. should keep me amused, lol.

Not sure what happened but at some point around Friday my Nokia N95 started telling me “SIM card registration failed”. Unfortunately, being at the British Grand Prix and no where near an alternative, I was unable to post from Lifeblog to this site any photos from the race as intended.
I was able to ring Orange on Saturday, and after 20mins on hold, spoke to a real person. Apparently, the details of the problem would be passed onto the Technical support team who would ring me back the next day and leave their direct number on voicemail, which didn’t happen.
Another 30 minute call to get to a real person this morning and a new sim is being sent out in the post. Hopefully, I’ll be back contactable again within the next day or so.