Before buying

Like I said, I used my previous phone for two-three years. It was great but lacking some important features. You couldn't really use it to read emails. Well, you could but it was running out of memory the whole time and you needed to keep deleting messages to free memory. The display was of good quality but simply too small for any serious internet surfing or viewing pictures taken with the camera. I guess that's what you get if you want a small phone.
So I was looking to buy a new phone for quite some time but didn't really find anything that would satisfy my needs. I tried the HTC TyTN, which is a Windows Mobile Pocket PC. For many of my needs, it was great. Emails, web surfing and the user interface of a Windows Mobile all looked very promising. However, using it as a phone was just horrible. At least for me, the phone is the most important feature. If that doesn't work or is too difficult to use, the it doesn't really matter how good the other features are. HTC has some new models coming up and I even tried one of the prototypes for HTC P4350. Again, great features and much smaller than the TyTn but as a phone - not for me. I also tried the Ericsson P990 and P990i. Not bad but way too big for my taste and I just couldn't get used to using it.
With the N95 coming, I decided to wait for it instead - and it was worth waiting.