Rupert Goodwins' Bacchanalian Diary

Tuesday 18/12/01

Among my many personality flaws is a regrettable reluctance to fulsomely praise those who brazenly bribe me. So let me put that right at once with a huge round of applause to mobile phone company Sendo -- newbies they might be, but they keep a steady stream of new toys hurtling into the office and that's exactly as it should be. As a result, I've been using Sendo phones for most of this year: jolly nice and light they are.

However, my latest one had a problem. The 200 series is a neat little thing; doesn't do infrared or data or WAP or whatever, but is an attractive and very portable design. However, mine developed a marked reluctance to respond to keypresses on the right hand side, resulting in some absolute stonking swearwords when trying to enter text messages that didn't need letters like E or M. So, I emailed the extraordinarily marvellous Lynne Thomas of Lexis PR -- who does Sendo -- and begged for a repair. In microseconds, a new phone was on its way: this time, the 200's smoother, shinier sibling, the equally dully named 500.

Which, I am pleased to report, is a most splendid device. Rather too much so -- it has a working WAP browser and, even more fearsome, a chat mode for text messages. This displays them as a conversation, one above the other, just like chat rooms online. It's incredibly seductive, so much so that you almost never notice you're spending ten pee per message.

So thanks, Sendo. You've just made my imminent pauperisation even nearer.