Archive for November, 2006

A journey up phone lane..

Nov 21st

Thought you guys would enjoy this little trip through the current and near phonescape…

Here is my informal list of “requirements” in an ideal phone, including new ones in the last year, in no particular order:

Always accessible QWERTY keyboard (I could deal with “quickly accessible” I suppose, but not a fan of the slide-out)
Touch screen (but you shouldn’t HAVE to use it. Treo/Palm does a great job here)
decent camera
Jog dial
3G preferred (new requirement)
Wifi (optional)
Memory card expandable
Multimedia support (including streaming)
Speakerphone
Good™ support (but only because of current job J ) (new requirement)
Full HTML browser (but Flash would be nice)

You can see the requirements played against the top of the line phones in the comparison table I created below. (Click for full size image)

Note: I left off the Q due to reports of horrible battery life, not being GSM, and various other complaints.

As you can see, the 8525 is the closest positioned (of currently announced USA carrier devices) to what I want, if WM5 has gotten stable enough and they really improved enough on the 8125, followed potentially by Cavalier.

If the Treo 750v makes an appearance as a USA 3G enabled version, then it could be the frontrunner, minus the bulk of the physical device.

I went ahead and tacked on the JAQ3 and P990 for comparison, though neither has been high on my list due to being primarily available overseas. Of the 2, I’d probably trend towards JAQ 3 since they would be most likely to have GoodLink I presume, but I doubt I’ll be buying another pricey non-USA supported phone after my Qtek 9100 (Cingular 8125) experience.

The wildcard here is T Mobile’s USA 3G launch (mid to late 2007 for general availability). They have been snapping up phones like crazy recently, so w/ a 3G offering I can imagine they’d be picking up some new phones pretty rapidly. In addition Windows Mobile 6 is around the corner (mid next year I think).

Anyway, feel free to use as reference or pass on to any others as phone-obsessed as I