Back in the days when SMS was new and exciting a lot of mobile phones were picking up a feature where users could specify a tone for incoming SMS by contacts. What ever happened to that? Even as recently as a few years ago, my old LG VX8100 had the feature. I upgraded to an LG VX8600 and discovered the feature was gone. It seems like this feature, which was common when SMS was not, is now uncommon when SMS is common.

I've spent a lot of time looking for this feature for my Nokia E70 and it just doesn't seem to exist. There was a $10 app called SMSAlert for Symbian 8, but the E70 runs Symbian 9. Reviews indicated that SMSAlert didn't work too well anyway.

There is an application called Ringo for Windows Mobile and Palm OS. I have heard mixed reviews about whether or not it works on Windows Mobile 6 yet, but these guys seem the type to make that a when, not an if, if not already. That's good because the only competitors for my Nokia E70 are the Nokia E90, again running Symbian (9.2), the HTC S710 which is a little weighty and hasn't got 3G support (T-Mobile is getting 3G support, but that's another post), and the rumored HTC S730.

The HTC S730 promises to meet the Nokia E90's feature set head to head, providing comparable functionality at what will hopefully be a good price. I really dig the form factor of these HTC phones, and if I do decide to replace the E70 it will be with one of these HTCs, unless something more interesting comes out in the near future or HTC drops some critical feature. Let's face it, I dislike all things Microsoft but they're doing well in this space and I think it's the right way to go right now.