Originally Posted by ScottC
Asking for "A Smartphone" is like walking onto a used car lot and asking them to sell you "a car".
What do you want to do with the device?
Will it mainly be used as a time planning device/contacts database (i.e. a true PDA)
Is Email and Internet access the most important?
Do you want multimedia functions for MP3 and/or video?
Does it have to have Bluetooth access?
Syncing with Outlook or another kind of client?
Where will it mainly be used, only at home or abroad too?
Too many questions to be able to offer a decent answer.
Good questions.
Basically, I want a pig that can lay eggs.
My perfect device would do the following things (ranked by priority):
1) Be an excellent and easy-to-use phone with very long battery life and possibility to use any mp3 file as ringtones.
2) Be a good E-Mail device. Yes, it should be able to sync with Outlook - I should be able to sync all my contacts over (not only those on the top level of the Outlook directory, but also subfolders from my Outlook address book).
3) I should be able to run AvantGo on it.
4) It should have a decent keyboard.
5) It should have a brilliant display.
6) It should still be small and lightweight.
7) (Now it starts getting unrealistic) It should be able to play MP3 files and should have at least a 20GB hard disk built in.
8) It should have a camera with at least 3 megapixels resolution and 3 x optical zoom - and not only that, I should be able to record video with it as well.
9) It should have Tri-Band.
10) Yes, it should have Bluetooth for easy syncing.
11) It should have W-LAN capability (so that I can use Skype on it).
12) It should support HSCSD and GPRS (not very important to me, just as a backup).
13) It should have a handsfree speakerphone feature.
14) I should be able to play DivX and MPEG-4 videos on it.
15) I should be able to use it as a VCR.
Basically, my perfect phone would be as stylish as an iPod, have all the phone features of the Sony Ericsson P910, would have all the video/VCR capalities of the Archos AV 400, but with better DivX compatibility, would take pictures in a quality as good as my Casio Exilim EX-Z4, would be usable to record moving pictures with sound in decent quality, would be usable to record from a TV signal like a VCR (like the Archos AV 400), would be a better e-mail client than the Blackberry devices...etc.
But to be realistic, I think the features of the Sony Ericsson P910 are pretty good.
I wonder, are there any phones out there which are combined with an MP3 player that has a hard drive built in (like the iPod)?