GSM QWERTY phone with long battery life

B

BisSee

New member
Hi, I am looking for a good texting phone that works with T-Mobile or AT&T. I am located around Dallas, Texas.

I currently have a Nokia 1661 bar phone, but it's very slow for me to compose messages on its non-QWERTY keyboard. The battery usually lasts about 3 to 4 days for me with my usual light usage (handful of texts + few minutes of voice). Even though the specs say that it can standby up to 475 h (~19 days), it never outlasts a week.

Can someone recommend me an inexpensive QWERTY phone that can actually last a week (as opposed to what's on the specs)? Having WLAN would be a plus but that might be asking for too much.

Primary
Price: New or used at less than $100
GSM 850/1900
good QWERTY keyboard
Week long battery life

Secondary (Optional)
WLAN + Internet browser
Smartphone
Form factor: Bar (are they more durable (since there is no sliding or hinging)?)

Tertiary (Optional)
Camera
GPS
 
Huh, I guess I'll stick to my current phone for now.

Is my price range too low? I was looking at used Blackberry 8820s, Nokia C3s, and Palm Treo Pros using gsmarena info, but I wanted people's recommendations on phones they've used before.... I know that at a higher price range, Nokia e71 seems to last 2-3 days. Mind you, all my numbers are from light usage.
 
Why do you need a week? There is nowhere to charge for days at a time?

A standout like an E71 might make a week mostly on standby IF you turn down all the auto-updating stuff like for hourly weather. Oh yeah and keep few apps active, this helps too. Run digital only if you have a phone that can do analog.

You could also get a battery case for certain phones to double or triple their battery life. This may be your best bet and it may allow you to reconsider certain phones. Some of the battery backs have a few thousand milliamp-hours of capacity. Just compare that to the stock battery capacity to get a sense of the improvement.

Or a solar case?
 
Well, I need the week of charge time because of the way I use mobile phones. I stick the thing in my backpack, forget about it, and then only take it out when I need to call or text someone or vice versa. This seems to work okay with my current T-Mobile Nokia 1661 phone and even better on the Tracfone Nokia 1100b I had a long time ago.

However, I've once had a used Sprint Motorola Razr V3m that almost seem to be out of battery power every time that I needed it. It got really annoying fast, and I don't really want to change my life (by charging an electronic device once a day) for something I use so little.

Well, I might be inheriting a Nokia e71 from my husband some time in the future (yay!), so I think my quest for a new phone comes to an end. Thanks everyone! The e71 seems to be pretty solid most of the time except when I manage to crash it playing with Ovi Maps. When I was fiddling with the phones (checking out the keyboards) at an electronics shop when he said something about preferring a keyboard with more space between the keys. I'm now looking for a phone with a different set of requirements for him.

Thanks for the battery suggestion. This is what you are referring to, right? I'll pass on the solar case though, since I'm indoors most of the time in front of computers.
 
A quick reminder. Lithium batteries on today's cell phones do not like to be run down past 20% more than a few times. In fact, they work better when they are kept "topped off" Running past 20% consistently can and will damage the battery and perhaps the device itself.
 
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