I'm in the market for a new mobile phone, and I'm trying to decide what to buy. I have a Sony Ericsson P910i right now. It's been a good phone, but it's getting long in the tooth.
I'd like a new mobile that supports WiFi and something faster than GPRS. I prefer something with a keyboard. I don't need to check my email constantly, but I would like to be able to do so from time to time. My daughter loves the drawing application on the P910i, so ideally my new phone would also have that capability.
The contenders? In my mind, it's between Apple's iPhone, Nokia's N95, and the latest update to my P910, Sony Ericsson's P990.
I know I left out the Treo. I was a Palm user from the beginning (I think I still have an original Palm Pilot with the logo from before they were bought by 3com). Before the P910, I had a Samsung SPH i300, and while it was awesome at the time, Palm hasn't innovated much in the past 5 years. I think the Treo is a clumsy phone with a PDA grafted on. Sorry, but I'm not going back.
The Sony Ericsson P1 is a non starter because of its lack of EDGE support.
As a mac guy, the iPhone is really compelling. I really appreciate a great UI, and the iPhone is going to provide that in spades; much cleaner than the N95, even though the N95 is more advanced in almost every way. The N95's advantage with GPS and Google Maps may not be as big a deal with the new Google Maps that uses cell towers to estimate location.. Unfortunately, the iPhone doesn't support tethering without a jailbreak and a SOCKS proxy, and I doubt the SDK will change that. I don't need to connect via the laptop daily, but for the occasional use, it would be hard to give that up.
This N95 review shows just how powerful a phone it is. But Audrey wouldn't have a drawing application.
I may just wait. With the iPhone SDK coming in February and a 3G iPhone coming sometime in 2008, now looks like a bad time to buy.
Honestly, the most interesting thing to wait for is the new S60 Touch Interface. Unfortunately, who knows how long that will be? Since Nokia hasn't announced a release date, it's probably going to be in the second half of 2008.
sigh
