A Phone that is not merely smart, but gifted?

March 26, 2008 9:05 AM

Does my ideal smart phone exist? Windows Mobile, stylus, candy bar form factor, wifi, standard head jack, superior camera?

I am gearing up to replace my Cingular 8125. I use my current phone mostly to 1) take notes with a stylus (I do this every day and it is a must-have feature), 2) check my email and favorite blogs, mostly over wifi, 3) sync with my Google Calendar (via Goosync), and 4) make phone calls. I also carry a digital camera and an MP3 player, because the camera on the 8125 sucks ass and because I never can find my headphone adapter for the mini-jack on the phone.

My dream phone has all the features of the 8125 but more processing power, a standard head phone jack and a decent camera, and ideally a larger screen, which would necessitate a form factor like the iPhone. I hardly use the keyboard of the 8125 and would not mind giving it up for a larger screen and a thinner phone. In fact I see the new phone as a laptop replacement on my frequent business trips, paired perhaps with a bluetooth keyboard for writing long messages and documents.

I have prowled around CNET and the Howard Forums and so on and my dream phone does not seem to exist.

posted by LarryC to technology (11 comments total)

The Cell Phone Finder does not appear to screen for your requested properties, but nonetheless, perhaps it might be of use to you at some point in your research.
posted by WCityMike at 9:12 AM on March 26, 2008

The HTC Touch doesn't fit the bill? The other phone I was thinking of was the Sony Ericsson P1 (top camera)
posted by StrikeTheViol at 9:21 AM on March 26, 2008

The ideal never exists. I can point you in two directions, though...
1) do you not always need those features, and would like to lighten your load? Get a small phone with a superior camera and use a Palm TX for the rest. Stylus, wifi, probably has a sync solution for Goo, takes standard headphones, and will play pretty much any media you can put on an SD card. No phone or camera, but more amenable to add-on keyboards and use as a letter-writing tool on planes, etc. When you just want to make calls, maybe snap a candid, only take the phone. I liked the camera in my Z3, and could send/receive SMS through it to the Palm and write with the stylus instead of my thumbs.
{compromise on several points but have one small device? a Centro}

2) start shopping at HTC's website. Depending on how far you want to go to keep as many items from your wish list, you're looking at something like the Advantage (why not have a GPS navigator in there too?) or the Sprint (a Vista laptop so small you could drop it in the toilet -by accident). If you want the whiz-bangiest for the big bucks. Not sure how far you're going to get with satisfying all your list, especially with the stylus/WM6 combo.
posted by bartleby at 9:40 AM on March 26, 2008

The Touch has a non-standard headphone jack. That said, I used an HTC Touch Cruise coupled with a Jabra BT3030 to give me a standard headphone jack on a handsfree, mic-enabled bluetooth box. Alternatively, there are plentifu and cheap breakout cables for the Touch, if bluetooth isn't your thing.
posted by benzo8 at 9:43 AM on March 26, 2008

darn, benzo8 - theBT3030 would have been a tiebreaker on my last 2 or 3 phone/ipod devices. is it full of dogtag stereo goodness?
posted by bartleby at 10:46 AM on March 26, 2008

I think it's EXACTLY what you want, but not avaliable for a few months:

Sony Xperia X1
posted by sourwookie at 12:21 PM on March 26, 2008

i-mate Ultimate 6150
i-mate Ultimate 8150
posted by healthytext at 1:11 PM on March 26, 2008

> is it full of dogtag stereo goodness?

Yup - it's fully A2DP compliant, so I get full stereo out, and its built-in mic means I get handsfree calls to boot. I use it with a pair of Shure E2Cs, which are so good at cutting out external sounds that I only wish the dogtag could pass it's mic straight through to the headphones at the touch of a button, so I can hear people talking to me if I need to!
posted by benzo8 at 2:49 PM on March 26, 2008

The Tilt is the refresh for the 8525.
posted by donovan at 2:53 PM on March 26, 2008

Whoops, sorry you said 8125.
posted by donovan at 2:54 PM on March 26, 2008

Thank you friends, a lot to explore here!
posted by LarryC at 9:16 PM on March 26, 2008