My current cell phone is a Cingular AT&T 8525 (aka Hermes, aka Tytn). This is my very first smartphone and I have had it for a couple of years now. When I got it, it felt like a really powerful machine (despite the horror of WM5.0) and a big departure from my Motorola V55x (that was itself a big change after my Siemens, and my beloved Nokia 8xxx… and the brickphones Nokia 5xxx and Nokia 3xxx).
Once unlocked, loaded with WM6.0, and well used… it seems slow and under featured! Stuff that I considered useless back on the day, now is mandatory: GPS, accelerometers, compass, video recording capabilities, etc.
At the same time, what I really want is a device that works great for making phone calls and do some texting… and a decent battery: a charge that holds for a whole day, please! My 6 month old netbook does a lot of stuff my smartphone used to do: reading ebooks, news, Google Maps, quick Wikipedia fact checks.
On the other hand, I prefer a quick look at Google Maps on the phone while driving to check traffic conditions (faster and less dangerous!), and it is much less conspicuous and a lot more convenient to look for that address in my email account on the cell rather than opening the netbook (even considering that, thanks to GMail offline capabilities, I don’t need a WiFi Hotspot for email access… in other cases, no such luck). Also, the battery life of the netbook is even worse than the cell’s.
So, feature phone or no?? And, in case of “yes,” which? iPhone 3GS? Palm Pre? Nokia N97? HTC Magic? HTC Hero?
All of them have amazing features on paper, but not few drawbacks. From close architectures to very limited network selection, to simple HW snaffus.
Does the perfect terminal exist? I want a GSM device (I travel the world, you know?), with an OS I can develop with… and it would be great if it worked with AT&T (not so ready to siwtch networks, yet)… a touch screen, a hardware keyboard… I’m not so sure about those.
… and while I ponder on that, my 8525 keeps working well enough to not justify a change (but I need to know what is out there, right? I’m a technologist of sorts, am I not?).
Share your 2c, will you?
