My search for the perfect (business) phone

I go through phones on a continuous basis and I always seem to find something I like better two months later. I'm a feature phone type of guy and have gone from phones that might give you scoliosis to little itsy bitsy phones. Let me run down a little short voyage of phones I have used over the years and I'll go into detail on my three most recent phones over the next couple of days.

My first ever phone was a random Motorola phone with D1 in Germany. My first ever US phone was a Nokia 9000 Communicator with Powertel in Florida. For its time that thing was ridiculously advanced but it would be a joke even compared to a cheap Chinese iPhone knock off. What a difference 11 years make.

I then graduated to an Ericsson T28i. A nifty little phone with a neat little spring mechanism to accept calls. It didn't do much except for SMS & voice but it had a good battery & solid form factor. The closing mechanism is a different story. It would wear out with time and I ended up having to heat up the plastic hook and bend it back into place. [more]



It couldn't have been that bad as the next phone I bought was the Ericsson T68m. Again just a solid phone, the email and everything didn't really get used by me as much as I probably should have.

Then it happened that Sony and Ericsson decided to create a bastard child company and I ended up buying a grey import Sony Ericsson P800.
The keyboard was simply a cover with button that each acted as a stylus when pressed. Interesting concept, not a very good idea especially when it relies on plastic parts not breaking. When the part of the phone that kept the screen from touching the keyboard failed the phone became essentially useless. Let's not even think about the stylus and data entry at the speed of a lethargic tortoise.

Treo 650
So having owned a Palm V before I ended up buying a Treo 650. At this time I betrayed Powertel now T-Mobile (after 8 years) and switched to AT&T. Yes, I am an idiot.
It became quickly obvious that Palm OS and a phone where more of a hack than a match made in heaven. Third party contact managers made the experience manageable but never good. Standby was alright and talk time never killed me. But what killed it was a round in the washer and dryer. It never recovered... not shocking.

Blackberry 8700
So I went and being a sales professional bought my first Blackberry. Now one of the things that Blackberry's don't like to tell you is that unless your company has BES and is willing to splurge a license on you the phone just becomes an expensive subpar email experience.
Well, the business I worked for didn't have BES but rather POP3 & IMAP. This essentially meant that I was spending $50 extra per month for delayed email and an incredibly terrible web browser. The poker app may have been my favorite feature and the little scroll wheel on the side of the phone was fantastic.


iPhone
Then about about six months after it came out I got an iPhone. It is the best data output device I know. It is also one of the worst data entry devices I have ever encountered. The no real keyboard drove me nuts often. That the phone would sometimes just stop working entirely if the screen got warm in the summer or cold in the winter. (Lets not even talk gloves) drove me insane. It's battery life wasn't bad and wasn't great. OWA support was great once it came.
Everything possible has already been said about the Jesus phone.

Blackberry Bold
So again thinking I should buy a serious business phone I ended up buying a Blackberry Bold this summer. The keyboard was solid and the screen gorgeous. But why is there only a trackball? What happened to the scroll wheel? The possibly best navigation tool I could think of. Am I the only one that liked it?

The company didn't feel like I was important enough for BES so I ended up getting another BIS account.
Now here comes the great Blackberry scam. In an effort to make you buy BES subscriptions they have essentially crippled OWA email. Forget syncing contacts and calendar both aren't an option out of the box.

The application selection for the Blackberry is subpar and comparatively expensive. I guess the Blackberry app store didn't have the iTunes app store race to the bottom.

HTC Hero with Sprint
Always loving a good underdog I decided to go brave the transition to Sprint. I broke my contract to do this but I will recoup my fine from AT&T within 3 months. This is due to that Simply Everything plan being a pretty damn good deal for me. It's my first CDMA phone and does alright in rural areas but I think this is mostly due to Alltel.

The phone itself has the usual Android complaint. It's a little laggy. I actually purged almost all widgets from the home pages in an effort to speed up the phone. It works and if you are willing to do some task killing you can keep it snappy. I expect it to get a little snappier with Android 2.0. Yes, I am an optimist.

The battery life right now is awful. This is supposedly due to bugs in the hacked together CDMA 1.5 implementation and should be fixed with a software upgrade but if you have this phone and can get 12 hours of moderate use out of it I'd love to know how.

I'm pretty happy with it, even though I'm getting Droid envy but the way I see it in six months Sprint will have a new feature phone and I'll find a new excuse to go waste more money upgrade to that phone. Hopefully with a bigger processor but until the I'm pretty happy with the HTC Hero.

Expect a full review with comparisons to the iPhone and Bold by midweek.