I made my decision on the phone. Being the semi-geek that I am, I put together a spreadsheet so that I could compare them. After doing this and spending a little time doing the research, I bought a phone – actually sooner than I thought I would. Here is what I did and why – sharing it is the least that I can do given the incredible answer that I received from you on my question about phones that make you smile (the Vertu, was NOT on my list – so sorry – ha!).

Here are the material differences to me between phones:

HTC Touch Dual
No wi-fi, no GPS, bu-bye
Maybe later with a US version
(I went and tried one, it DOES feel nice in the hand)

SE Xperia X1
Very cool, not out yet
Only 3.15mp camera
No infrared port
No FM radio
No HSCSD
Like $1,000ish on preorder
Truly a world phone for GMS and UMTS
I don’t think so – maybe after it’s out for a time
Do like the keyboard build tho – nice

Nokia N82
Liked the specs very much
No infrared port
Super camera w/Xenon flash
Bothered by Euro only UMTS (when I can get a phone with US 850/1900 UMTS)
Candybar style (sorry, but I don’t like that form factor much)
Compared very well to N95 8GB
Really close, almost

Apple iPhone 3G
Out soon (we think) but not an issue for me – not worth the wait
Love my iTouch, but don’t like the form factor for a phone
I use Macs all the time, and EVERYONE has this phone-w/more to come (sorry)
It does have the best browser – OS X rocks
Nope, not today
Maybe a 3G for $199 just for fun, if that price point holds up, why not??

Google Phone
Pie-in-the-sky (for now)

Nokia N95 8GB
Got the price down to $579 and bought it
Love it so far – slider is solid
Unlimited MediaNet for $15 bucks a month on AT&T, not bad
Screams on the ‘net
It does everything
Biggest surprises: stereo speakers are excellent & easy sync with iTunes
Biggest irritation: keypad lock is a bit of a pain, but you need it w/slider phones

ARJWright was on the money. That’s where I am. Thanks again for your help. This was fun!

Bill

Nokia – Cool – I like that streaming video services like Qik seems to be centering a lot of cool stuff around that platform. From what I’ve seen Qik is a service that allows those with Nokia phones to stream live video from the phone to the web. I’ve given a really quick thought to getting a Nokia only for that purpose. My last Nokia was an N73 I bought off the Internet. It was cool but ultimately I couldn’t find much to hold my interest long term. When it broke and refused to boot up I was kind of happy.

Then Judie made her famous Mogul unboxing video and soon I was using the Sprint Mogul. That was my main phone for several months. I loved the synch to Exchange (just like your Samsung will do) and I thought the phone was pretty steady. Long term I didn’t care for the flip and the keyboard was tough to make a lot of progress with. I still have the Mogul on my kitchen shelf.

For day to day I carry two phones:

Blackberry 8320 which is my main emailer. It’s a great email phone. Unfortunately the browser stinks.

For everything FUN I LOVE my iPhone. For a rock solid 4 months i made fun of anyone who used one. I didn’t see them out in public that much and took that as an opportunity to email my buddie Mark about how dubious I was about their usability.

Then I bought one. The main reason I made the purchase was because I had purchased an iPod Touch on a whim at Costco. The Touch is an iPhone without the Phone. I loved using the Touch on my home WIFI and suddenly I wanted to be able to take it everywhere with me — so I convinced myself to pick up an iPhone.

Now the phone goes with me everywhere. It is my alarm clock in the morning. For a out an hour while I’m waking up I review the news of the day. All on the fantastic web browser. This web browser blows every other mobile browser out of the water.

For a while the jury was out on how well I could type with the iPhone. I’m still not perfect but I’m getting accurate enough where the last few weeks I’ve given serious consideration to using the iphone as my ONLY phone and canning my Blackberry.

So far I’ve resisted going solely iPhone because I find the implementation of Google Mail on the iPhone to be quirky. Some days it can take forever to retrieve an email (via imap — which is NOT push) and other days it works perfectly. I haven’t seen a stable enough email retrieval pattern on my iPhone. If the email was a little more consistent in speed and reliability of retrieval I’d probably throw my Blackberry in the trash.

When you talk “weekend fun” — in my opinion you are talking iPhone — and believe me I thought I’d be the last person on earth to ever utter those words…

himself

Bill