It's very tempting to proclaim that I'd rather have an older Nokia 9210i than the latest whizz-bang Nokia 9500, but I'd only be kidding myself. If someone seriously offered me the choice of both, I'd go for the new model every time, as I know you would too.
But there are a number of interesting comparisons between the 'old' and the 'new' in which the 9500 comes off significantly worse. Yes, yes, it's got Wi-Fi and Bluetooth and GPRS and a proper MP3 player, but check out the items below before you sign off that purchase cheque.
The keyboard. Yes, it looks great and the actions not that bad, but the 'Q to P' span is a good 2cm less than on the older 9210i, a full 20%, which is the difference between four finger typing and two. It all feels just a little fiddly.
Then there's the removal of spell checking and a thesaurus from 'Word' (or 'Documents', as it's now known). OK, so there's now a word count, but many people would rather have had the original functions. The 'Notes' application is also missing in action, although admittedly this was such a turkey that hardly anyone used it anyway.
Navigators aren't really Nokia's strong suit, they seem to have gone through a number of designs over the years. The 9210i's 4-way cursor was criticised at the time for being a little woolly, but the 9500's navigator is far more fiddly. Yes, there are now alternative up/down/left/right arrow keys, but they are less intuitive when you're trying to get to something in a hurry. With no touch-screen on any of these models, a really useable navigation control is a must. And the one on the front cover is even worse - when trying to press it 'in' you'll be lucky if you get the result you want at least half the time.
What about the appalling video performance of the RealPlayer application supplied? Video Player on the four year old 9210 matches its quality and performance with a processor that runs at a third of the speed.
Then there are the little things, like the quieter speaker, the way your MMC card can't be read until you've popped the plastic phone rear cover back on and the interminably sluggish cover interface to your Contacts store.
It seems churlish to moan about these things - after all, we have just got ourselves a brand new Communicator. But at £550 (SIM-free), I think there's plenty of room for complaining about things that are genuine disappointments.
At least some of these points can be rectified by a new firmware release; let's hope Nokia are even now working on improvements and fixes. Until then, I'll be using my 9500 but still casting a wistful glance back at my trusty 9210i sitting quietly in the corner.
