I took a couple of my old phones (E71 and k800i) on holiday to sell them but that didn’t happen so was looking to try one of those phone recycling by post companies here in the UK last week, I was about to pop down the post office with my jiffy bag full of phones last week to send them off to “Phone Recycle Bank” (found via moneysavingexpert.com) who had the highest payouts, but decided to google them for reviews where I found really bad writeups from people who had either had their phones lost or the company said the phone was not working and paid out less money.

So I did a bit more research and remembered all the mazuma mobiles ads on TV… googled their customer experiences instead where the ratings were far more positive so decided to go with them.

You start on the Mazuma website by entering the phone models  you want to sell and they give you the price they are prepared to pay, which was lower than “Phone Recycle Bank” but at least the phones don’t get lost or you offered less than you thought you were going to get. Then you wack in your address, make a username and a password so they can post you a prepaid bag to send your phones to them in with a delivery note already created.





After two days the envelope arrived, I popped the phones and note in then went off to the post office to get a FREE proof of postage which was just a sticker and a receipt.





The proof of postage give you free insurance up to the value of £41 if your package does not get to mazuma, so off went the phones…

I expected to get no feedback for 2-3 days however the next morning I got an email saying the phone had been received for processing.





And sure enough later the same day (just the say after putting the phones in the post office I got the payment is on it’s way email.





Day 3 (today) I checked the bank account and sure enough there was £49 from Mazuma… I’m very impressed, now rather than cluttering up one of our brand new IKEA cupboards they turned into cash!.

After 18 months of being tied to a Sony Ericsson K800i on Orange, I am finally free to choose a new mobile again. So after much shopping around for an N95 8GB which I have wanted for months now given it has WLAN , a nice Carl Zeiss 5MP camera, and GPS, I at the last minute decided to go for something completely different and I am oh so happy with the decision to buy a Nokia E71. It arrived on Tuesday and I have found it almost impossible to put down ever since.

After reading so many positive reviews where the only thing people seem to complain about is that the camera isn’t the best thing since sliced bread, it seems well on route to being the best smart phone of 2008 if not phone in general. The GPS is brilliant it locks on here in west London in a matter of seconds, the camera is OK but then on a device 1cm thick what do you expect??. WLAN browsing is super easy to set up and setting up to connect to my home network took a couple of minutes including adding the MAC address to my list of allowed devices on the router.

It feels like quality, mostly metal construction with firm keys that even my large fingers can speed around accurately. The screen is not too small, and is super crisp and clear.

For the deals side of things, there are a few around but the best value I found was on three where for just £20/month for 18 months on mix and match 300, you get 300 minutes/SMS per month to any network and 50 mins video calls which I thought was to any network but seems is only to same network users.

The real selling points about choosing three for me were that somehow you get to connect to skype and MSN messenger for free all day long without any data charges, and £20/month was the cheapest rate for the phone, the next cheapest networks were asking for £30/month. I just can’t see the point of spending £30+/month for a phone, global credit crunch etc.

With three you can get a coupon code allocated to you if you chat to one of their agents online during the online shopping cart process. I worked out this is just an identifier for the agent who offers you the special deal, you get the actual code sent out with the phone, if you chat to another agent they will give you a different “code” and say the first one does not work, they are just trying to screw each other out of a commission so don’t worry about it, must be a cut-throat selling place where they work in India. You can at least get a free voucher for £20 of accessories from threeaccessories.co.uk which gets sent out to you within 24 hours of you ordering, very simple and nice freebie.

Because I want to use my own headphones which are the bomb rather than the Nokia ones I just got a 2.5mm to 3.5mm adapter from ebay for the tiny sum of 15p which some lovely Chinese fellow will be sending be from the other side of the planet, amazes me how cheap things are when bought like this.

If you are thinking to get a phone that does pretty much everything, I would definately recommend the E71. If you are already thinking about getting an E71 then what are you waiting for?, go buy it now!. If you are in the UK the best deal really does seem to be with three, I was on three a couple of years ago and I really must say that their customer services has improved massively I find them very professional and pleasant to deal with this week.