It is a very interesting market out there. Consumers have the choice between the some huge heavyweights, such has the Apple Iphone, Blackberry Bold,Blackberry Storm, and for the enthusiasts of Palm the Palm Treo. For those people looking for something different, AT&T has the Fuse (HTC Touch Pro), T-Mobile has the G1 made by HTC. And I am sure there are plenty of others that could be categorized in this smartphone market.

I currently have an aging Palm Treo 680, yes I am a Palm advocate. I think they create a great product, or should I say, used to. The Palm hardware and software is becoming outdated quickly, missing the higher res screens, better interfaces and better connectivity found on all modern smartphones. To qualify a modern smartphone, at least for power users, it must have 3G or other high speed network, WiFi, lots of memory, a keyboard (either virtual or physical) and most of the modern ones are also including GPS. My Treo doesn't have 3g, it doesn't have wifi, it doesn't have GPS, but hey, it does have a physical keyboard, and enough memory to store the apps you need.

I am wanting a new phone badly, but can't find one that fits my needs / wants. I don't want the Windows Mobile OS, which really blocks out a lot of the smartphones being developed now days. I would prefer a physical keyboard, but I might be able to get by with an iPhone like keyboard. And I want to be able to control the apps on my phone, not be dictated to which apps I can use on my phone. As you can see this crosses the iPhone off, Blackberries aren't as bad on the app side, but I really dislike the idea of using the BIS for my personal e-mail, especially since it is really just a one-way sync. The Android looks cool, but I really questions how good it is going to be. Don't get me wrong, I really like Google, and they come out with some great ideas, but their products seem rushed and never polished. They just don't seem stable enough. And then you got Palm, using the same OS base for 1901 it seems. Their interface hasn't changed much, but it really hasn't had a need to. But the bad thing is, the underlying components to their OS hasn't changed either, which is killing it, a slow painful death. They have known for years that high speed internet was coming to phones, but yet their OS can't handle 3g or wifi ... WHY Not, this isn't new technology. It is sad, They've been producing the Treo's now for almost 5 years, but not a single change to the OS in that time, okay, maybe small changes, but nothing significant. Microsoft has released two new OSes in that time WM 5 and WM 6. Palm in that time has sold their software side, bought it back, rumors of working with Access to create a Linux based OS was out there, and now we sit here , the fourth quarter of 2008 with nothing.

And now I sit here, with my Treo 680, which needs to be rebooted about once a week, and I have to reboot the reboot each time because it doesn't boot up properly on the first boot up. It freezes on my in the middle of conversations. If I have a call come in while on the other line, and hang up with the original caller to answer the new call, I can't. It doesn't respond until the caller has been sent to voicemail. It is crazy how many bugs are in the OS.

So what am I do, I need a phone. I am on the AT&T network and really don't want to switch. The Bold looks cool, and it could work, but I don't want to pay for a BES connection to get my IMAP mail working. The iPhone could work, but I have Apple telling me what I can and shouldn't load on the phone that I bought. (Why people put up with this, I have no idea, if Microsoft only let you load programs they approved on your desktop .. would you like that). Palm's OS sucks, Windows Mobile sucks. Symbian's are okay, but their aren't any cool phones out there .. It looks like I am stuck with my Treo 680 for a while. Maybe the iPhone 3 will change things. Maybe by the time AT&T adopts the Android it will be proven as reliable and viable option. Maybe Palm can fix their OS and even better, have it be Linux based.