Dear Rafe Blandford, what Nokia phone should I buy...?

This is a post for Rafe Blandford, top man, editor, publisher, super-genius Nokia know-it-all and the man behind such sites as All About Symbian and All About Windows Phone.

Dear Rafe,

For some time now I’ve been feeling like chucking my existing smartphones out the window of the train, car or office that I’ve been inhabiting. The data connectivity of my smartphones (all brands — Apple, Android, BlackBerry, Windows) are second to none. We know this. All the whizzy stuff tends to work quite well, network permitting.

However, when I want to make a telephone call that lasts for more than 5 seconds, my smartphones are completely failing me. On multiple networks. None of them seem to be able to maintain a call beyond a few seconds when my train is moving slowly out of Waterloo. None of them seem to be able to cope properly with any audio telephony.

I therefore think it’s time to at least try a proper Nokia. I don’t mean a Windows Phone, I mean one of the Ye Olde Symbian specials. Please could you recommend 2-3 proper Nokias that I can evaluate and then purchase? Ideally I’d like a device with data connectivity and ideally I’d like my address book to sync with Google. But given that I only actually phone about 5 people, adding a few numbers to an address book isn’t a problem. Price is not an issue. Quality is more important in this bracket. So whilst I am attracted to a Nokia 100 series device for a tenner, I’m happy to consider a more expensive equivalent provided you reckon the components I care about (principally the bits that let me make and maintain a phone call to a network) are higher quality.

What is your suggestion Mr Blandford?

Thanks for your time in advance,

Ewan

When — if — Rafe has the time to pen a response (he’s a busy guy), I’ll publish it and link the reply here.

Update: Barely 2 hours later, Blandford has replied. See the comments!