I seem to have dropped my current mobile once too often : the reception contained way too much interference to understand the one calling me. So I decided it was time to look out for a new mobile. I almost bought the Nokia 6101 as it contained an FM radio, but the counter guys at Vandenborre were so unfriendly I decided to shop elsewhere.


The same evening I stumbled onto this (Dutch) review of the Panasonic VS6 on newmobile.nl, and found it too good to be true : a clamshell phone with a 16 million color screen, a 2 megapixel camera and bluetooth support for a sub 200 Euro price was unbeatable in its category. Panasonic seems to be only available in the PhoneHouse, where they offered also a Bluetooth USB dongle for an outrageous price of 45 Euro, whereas you can find a 10 Euro specimen in every grocery shop.


The phone itself then : the screen just blows you away with its crispness and colour, and the pictures the 2mp camera takes are quite good of quality. The keypad layout could be a bit better (IMO only Nokia produces phones with nice large keypads), and the contact book can only store contacts attributes if you save them in the phone's memory instead of the SIM card, which is a bit sad.


I was a bit afraid for Bluetooth support under Debian, as gnome-bluetooth wasn't available in the default repository, but kdebluetooth is a nice solution also. Time to personalize the phone with some cool graphics and realtones !