Last night I put my BlackJack II up for sale on eBay in anticipation of the 3G iPhone release. It sold just a few hours later, so I am all set for when it arrives in June (hopefully :P).

But this morning while perusing my usual tech news websites I saw a link to The Boy Genius to a review of Nokia’s revision of the E61, the E71. In 2006 I actually considered an E61 because of it’s large, gorgeous screen and spacious thumboard, but ultimately decided against it because it was so wide. This new model though looks absolutely fantastic!

I’ve been switching between the BlackJack II and the N95 8GB for the past two months, simply because the Nokia was faster, had better signal strength everywhere, and has an excellent 5 megapixel camera, a feature I have noticed myself using a lot more often these days. Oddly, my Exchange email seemed to work better and emails come through on the Nokia too.

The only thing that really kept me switching between the two (and why I bought the BlackJack II in the first place) was because of the thumboard. I am not a fan of T9, and while I am fairly good at it these days, I’m faster on the QWERTY. I’ve done a bit of typing on my iPod Touch to get the feel of what the iPhone is/would be like, and while it’s good, no matter how much Apple say it is, it’s not better than a proper thumboard.

And now enter this thing. Ultra slim, similar in size to the iPhone, but with a massive amount of available apps and a QWERTY keyboard! My contact and Nokia says it will be out Q3 2008, not too long to wait. My decision has been made a lot harder…