Readers of gadget magazine T3 have voted w810 as the best mobile phone. But w810 does not seem to be coming to cingular until late september. Going unlocked is tempting. The price of unlocked phones also have come down.

If it is unlocked it will be convenient for me to use in India as well. All the news today is on verizon introducing the LG chocolate. That also looks good. But it does not have a good camera.

The lowest price for w810 is around $300. It is funny to see how different stores write arbitrary numbers and then strike that out to put a lower number and call the difference as savings. The price at sonyericcson website is $499. No “savings” there. Amazon strikes out $599 and puts the price as $379. There is also another seller at amazon who strikes out $799 and puts $463. That is definitely big savings there. In ebay it goes between $300 and $350. Hmm, I will wait little more for the savings to improve.

Here is another update on w810. An article in Washington Post claims that they tested w810 from cingular. But it is a bit depressing to see the expected date to be late summer. Also Sony-Ericcson has reported great earnings for Q2 partly due to sale of this phone. In forums also people claim it is due in late September.

I was bored with my current cell phone and started to check for the Upgrade phone link on my Cingular account everytime I went there. I had a sony-ericcson T637 for nearly two years. It is a good phone and has served me well. I never had any problems with that. But now I want to get a new gadget since it has started to become a bit boring.

I carry my camera whereever I go. The T637 had a camera in it. But that is worser than a webcam. Mainly for that I bought the small Canon powershot series so that it can fit in the pocket without a big bulge. It is an awesome camera for that size. But I still have to carry both the cell phone and the camera in the same pocket since the keys are in other pocket. So I want a phone which has a good camera.

Also I listen to audio books in my car. I realized when I go to fitness center as well as at many waiting places also I could listen to some audio books. So I wanted my phone to be a good mp3 player too. I am not a big fan of ipods.

I looked around for a while and came across a few good phones. The review of the Sony-Ericcson w810 got my eye. This is one wicked cool phone. All I wanted was there in this phone. A good 2MP camera and mp3 player with 512MB memory and is expandable. It is already released in USA and is available unlocked. But I don’t want to jump out and pay $400-500 for this.

Since my upgrade time with cingular has also come, I started looking for cingular to offer this phone. I did a web search and found there are lots of people out there like me, waiting for cingular to bring this phone. For example see this thread in the forums at cingular.

But there seem to be no solid date of arrival for this phone. Since May several dates were predicted. It was Father’s day, then early summer. Next date is August 1. ‘Coming soon’ was always there. I will wait, since I am in no hurry. Meanwhile I will carry around my camera, listen to books only in my car and check the cingular website everyday.