During my last excursion through cell phone land I thought I’d found the phone of my dreams – the Nokia E75. Sadly, after long hours of research, I’m sorry to report that it too has fallen short of my expectations. I’ve Googled, watched videos, asked questions, combed over specifications and came “this” close to buying one Ebay. Put the money in my PayPal account and made a bid. But while waiting for the next bidder (which took a day) I realized that my excitement over this little gadget was already starting to wane. And with good reason. As I did my research I learned things I knew were going to make me really upset that I’d dropped upwards of $300 for it. For starters, I learned that the battery life on a brand new one might only get you through a full day. I hate that. Many a PDA/Smartphone has ended up on my do-not-purchase list because of the battery life. These phones are designed with many bells and whistles. If you use them all the time, the battery needs to stand up to it. The one thing Motorola did really right with its Q9h was to throw in a longer life battery. When it was new, my Motorola Q9h would go 2 days on a charge with the 1800 MHz one. Now I’m down to a full day and that’s not bad.
Then I learned that a good many of these phones do not have a processor speed that can keep up with the demands a true Smartphone user will place upon it. I already get pretty frustrated when I’m trying to check my AOL email on the browser, receive text messages, call my mother and take a picture of a random bird all while my poor Motorola starts to stall. Add to that scenario the other features newly being incorporated into these phones, like the GPS and WiFi. Suppose you wanted directions but were simultaneously attempting to finish a phone call with a client while your husband is texting you a shopping list, you’re gonna need that phone to keep up!! So as I read on and on about this phone’s tragic shutting down and that one’s sluggishness I realized I had better hold off on plopping down real money for them.
Why not just get an iPhone? Five reasons.
- The first one is that they were stupid enough to release a phone without MMS. What is wrong with them? Even though I hear the next version will fix this, I lost respect for them when I learned about the lack of MMS, a feature widely used by everyone. From snapping a photo at the supermarket to send to your spouse so you don’t pick up the wrong kind of peas to sending grandma cute pics of the new baby it’s become such a basic function that not having it seems… well… stupid.
- The second reason is totally a personal preference. It has that virtual keyboard I find to be clumsy to type on. I still like a real, moving parts, keyboard. It’s a tactile thing.
- While I will admit many of the applications available on the iPhone are useful and super cool, and it does seem to have good battery life, and it also seems to handle all those apps with little or no struggle, it doesn’t offer a version of Office. I’m told the new iPhone will also address this issue and that users will have the ability to read Office files. But it will still not offer the ability to create or edit such files. Most people don’t care about this. But I like having the option and have, in a pinch, needed to avail myself of my Motorola Q's Office Suite. It's come in handy.
- No slot for an SD card. While I realize it comes with 16GB, people often want to quickly and easily transfer files. Of course, this is hard to do with no filing system, which my husband confirmed the iPhone doesn’t have in this iteration. I think that’s stupid too, but who am I?
- This last reason is totally ridiculous but it’s a reason nonetheless. My husband is a MAC aficionado/techie geek (might as well plug his blog, Voice of Rosen, which offers articles more technically diverse than this blog, but I digress). He praises Apple like they were manna from Heaven. That annoys me. Having an iPhone would be like joining his silly religion. I will not do it. I will not do it unless the iPhone beats everyone to the punch and designs my dream phone. (Keep reading.)
The "MyPhone" aka My Dream Phone
You see above you all the hot phones of the present. A couple of these haven’t even been released yet, but will be very soon. I got very excited about all of them upon first glance. They all have great cameras, all the now-standard
features - MP3 playback, bluetooth, WiFi, GPS, on and on and on. Some claim to have better battery life. Others claim to have better GPS, etc. But no ONE unit has everything I’d be willing to shell outrageous amounts of money for. I found myself debating whether or not to spend the hundreds on any of them and coming to the conclusion, "nah, it can wait."
So I'm just going to wait it out and see if someone will develop the phone of my dreams. I might even just order a replacement for my Motorola Q (the keys have gone completely hinky) and wait out the new developments. In the meantime...
My dream phone would have...
- Dual keypads. One QWERTY and one Numerical. Sliding, flipping, fold out… anything well designed and sturdy but no virtual keyboard, thank you.
- ALSO, a touchpad. Why? Because. I might want to type out my emails and laundry lists and Word documents using the keyboard but I might want to navigate my Google Map or favorite website using my fingers.
- A battery that can make it through a full day of using all of its most intensive features. At the very least, take a cue from Motorola and offer 2 batteries in the standard package. A standard one and a longer usage one with a cover that will accommodate it. Yes, the bigger battery makes it somewhat heavier and somewhat clunkier but I haven’t minded the half an inch thickness on the Motorola and I suspect most people won’t mind that much. Or better yet, offer two versions. One for the lighter user and one for the heavier user who will put up with a somewhat larger unit so that they can keep their versatility. Charge them more. It’s not that hard, fellas.
- Must have an SD slot of some kind. USB is good when you’re synching, deleting, doing phone clean up, etc. But if you just want to quickly give that Word doc to another person, (say, a fellow classmate) then you just want to hand that over – no nonsense.
- Other amenities of less importance that wouldn’t be bad to include would be a sliding lens cover for the camera lens (some of these phones now have very nice lenses that are unprotected), a speakerphone button that is easy to access during a call and a voice dialing program that actually works.
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