My ideal mobile device

Hardware requirements:

• Small enough to put it on my jeans front pocket and always be with me.
• GSM and UMTS (to make phone calls and be always connected to the Internet) with efficient and well designed antenna+radio, Wi-Fi (to use high speed and low cost networking when available), Bluetooth (to transfer files to other mobile devices on the go)
• Wireless modem with USB to connect it to my computer and with Hayes command set. Computer to phone Internet connection is also known as Tethering. (iOS, Symbian and Android have Tethering)
• Assisted GPS to be able to know my position to show a map and be notified when I am near some place.
• Non-volatile memory (keep memory without the need of a battery) (preferably flash memory instead of hard disk because flash is more resistant to being dropped)
• External storage memory cards (microSD preferred) (iPhone does not have external storage memory cards) I also like being able to change the memory card without having to shutdown and remove the battery (many BlackBerries have the memory card bellow the battery)
• Sliding Full keyboard. I like to sense the keys with my fingers to be able to type quickly and not make lots of errors. (My first impression of the iPhone keyboard was quite bad, but after having used my iPhone4 for some time I find it quite good. Anyway most people agree that iPhone's keyboard is not as good as a physical full keyboard like BlackBerry's. BlackBerry Pearl half keyboard is also not enough for me. Everyone that has tried the half keyboard of the Pearl and the full keyboard of the curve prefers the full keyboard.
• High resolution (no less than 150k pixels) full-color display to be able to see at least one paragraph of text and photos that uses all the phone area (so I need a sliding keyboard). I do not like PenTile matrix family displays like the one at the Nexus One. I prefer rectangular matrix displays like the one at the iPhone4.
• Good enough photo camera with acceptable flash to take the occasional photo or video. The camera startup time has to be fast otherwise the moment to take the photo may be gone. Nexus One camera is faster and better than iPhone 3GS one, but iPhone camera is faster than Motorola Droid. Also the camera should be good enough to not have issues with the white balance like the iPhone4 or the Nexus One that also have issues with white balance under dim light conditions. I do not need too many megapixels but good performance and quality (HTC seems to be degrading quality in latests phones like the HTC Droid Incredible that has a worst camera than the Nexus One)
• Loudspeaker for the ringtone and hands-free operation.
• Vibrator with different vibration modes for different notifications (I keep most of the time my phone silent to prevent bothering others and preventing others knowing when I am being called or texted)
• Standard micro-USB or mini-USB data and power adapter (iPhone has the proprietary iPod connector, but all Androids and BlackBerry have standard USB power connectors) It seems the better designed micro-USB will be the standard data and power connector for European phones.
• Standard 3.5mm headphone, microphone and control TRRS connector (BlackBerry, iPhone and new Androids like Nexus One have a standard TRRS connector)
• FM radio receiver (many Nokias and Androids have FM radio reception but neither iPhones nor Blackberries have FM radio)
• Touchscreen I do not find having a touchscreen improve usability too much (in presence of a full keyboard) (current Blackberries are quite usable without having a touchscreen), but I found the touchscreen should be capacitive (like iPhone or most Androids) and not resistive (like new Nokias or most MSWindowsMobile based phones) as resistive touch screens require a stylus, have less resolution and do not support multitouch.
• Trackball is very useful when you need to select a link on a web page or move around with precision (all Androids have it).
• I do not want a proximity sensor that does not work correctly (I prefer not having a proximity sensor at all). Both the iPhone4 and the Nexus One has issues with the proximity sensor where it is easily unlocked when speaking and you can accidentally hang up.

Software requirements:

• Exceptional Usability in every application and overall. Nokia engineers do not put much effort in usability of current phones (like in network connections or calculator) where both Android and iPhone excel Nokias by far. Blackberries are also very usable. I also need to disable every time consuming animation that some users like.
• Phone calls :-)
• SMS and MMS
• Web browser (preferably based on WebKit) that allows saving and offline HTML reading of content stored on the memory card (Madrid subway network has large sections without cell coverage) (iPhone, Android and Nokia have browsers based on WebKit, but none of them allow neither saving nor visualizing saved content), be able to find-on-page (iOS and Android 1.5 browser has find-on-page) and keep open URLs/windows on shutdown or crash (Nokias and Android at least does not keep them)
• HTTP Proxy server configuration. Many corporate Wi-Fi networks need a HTTP Proxy to access the Internet. Most phones do not allow HTTP proxy configuration (Android makes HTTP proxy configuration hard, Blackberry neither (you may set up the proxy only in the BlackBerry Enterprise Server), but most Nokias and iOS have proxy configuration)
• User data encryption using the password that unlocks the phone. (Microsoft Windows Mobile has user data encryption, Android has internal data encryption but not for external storage, BlackBerry has user data encyption also for external storage, Apple iOS has user data encryption)
• Audio and video player without DRM (MP3, AAC and H.264 or similar for high quality audio and video) (iPhone has DRM)
• Stopwatch and countdown timer.
• Calculator and spreadsheet
• E-book reader with standard format support like EPUB or FictionBook (in Android you have the great FBReaderJ) (PDF support is not needed since PDF is designed for printing, so it is not easily reformatted to view in different devices)
• PDF reader for slide watching (not for ebook as I already said)
• Simple Note taking (no titles in notes, just body)
• Voice call (AMR) and sound (higher quality) recorder (Most Nokias have a voice recorder, Android can record voice but you have to access it using AnyCut application from the market, does not record voice in background and does not record calls (Android Feature Request 2117: Call Recorder), Blackberries need the latest OS 4.5 to have a voice recorder and iPhone 3GS has a Voice Memo application and the Apple Store has a call recorder)
• Video recorder and editor to trim large videos must be available. iOS has a video editor but Android does not have basic video trim functionality.
• Voice commands ("call ...", "pick up", "hang up", "record voice memo", "play ...") with speech synthesis to not have to touch or see the phone while not possible to (driving) (iOS has voice commands but lacks "record voice memo", Voice Actions for Android are not usable because of Android issue #11062 voice commands do not work offline (they need a good internet connection), BlackBerry Voice Commands, Nokia Voice Commands allow to set voice commands for any application)
• Voice to text transcription (not required)
• Task list manager
• Formated text editor (either HTML or office word processor)
• On-the-Fly Spell checker being able to choose language from the text editor (iOS, BlackBerry, and Android have an spell checker).
• copy/cut/paste (Android has copy/paste but Android fragmentation make some phones have decent copy/paste in the browser while others not and Google is aware of Android Issue 3190: Improve copy-paste in Browser/WebView, iOS has very good copy/paste, and Microsoft Windows Phone 7 just added basic copy/paste support)
• Data stored in an efficient SQL embedded database (SQLite is being used on iPhone, Android and Symbian OS 9.4)
• Full text search for any data stored on the phone (most importantly: calendar entries, tasks, and notes). The use case I need is this one: I just realized I need to buy milk so I click on "new task", type "buy milk" and save. Later on, I save some other tasks and then another "buy oranges". When I get to the supermarket I just want to click on "search", type "buy" and see all the things I have to buy and check then off (or delete) as they are done. Using a phone without full text search I would have to browse through all the tasks to see which of them are buy ones. iOS has search, but it will not search in contacts notes field, as Apple states, so you need third party apps. BlackBerry fails at search by not finding contacts by the notes field. Nokia supports search if you install Nokia In-device search. Anyway Nokia is not a solution since if you have to search you may have many items and if you have many items you get Nokia memory full problems. Incredibly, with Android you can not search in the calendar nor in all the fields of contacts. (search is better in iOS than Android because it searches more fields and has Unicode support, but neither searches notes field in contacts)
• Good background and parallel applications support to be able to browse emails or tasks while listening to music or receiving messages (Nokias Symbian S60 will not let you browse photos while listening to music, iOS and Android have multitasking)
• Good memory management. Neither Microsoft Windows Mobile (you can see how badly Microsoft Windows Mobile manages memory by looking at the limits they impose on the system) nor Symbian (you can see how badly Symbian manages memory by looking at my crashy Nokia N80) based phones have good memory management leading to high memory usage, crashy applications and reduced performance over continuous usage. Android has good memory management because it uses Linux and Java with Android advanced memory manager.
• Offline usage. I need all my important data to reside in the flash memory of the device so I can work offline when there is no wireless coverage or I just do not want to pay. It seems some terminals require you to have wireless connection for most operations even if the information could be locally stored. (Google Applications like calendar, gmail and maps work badly or not at all, like maps, if you are not online. Nokia Ovi Maps, TomTom for MSWindowsMobile, TomTom for iPhone and the old TomTom for Symbian work offline. Android (Android Issue #4471: Downloadable maps for offline navigation/location) and BlackBerry do not even have an offline GPS navigator application so they are not ideal for decent navigation)
• Model-view-controller widget toolkit that comes with a Table widget with TableModel as good or better than that of Swing or GTK+
• Alarm clock with sound and vibration with GSM either turned off or muted to be able to have the phone wake me up without having a out of hours phone call wake me up. (Some phones do not have this functionality, but Android, iOS and Symbian do.)
• Quick guest accounts to allow any person make a call or browse the Internet with my device being almost locked to any other information like contacts, bookmarks, browse history. It would be great to be able to create various accounts on the mobile just like in UNIX.
• No spyware. (Apple iOS 4 allows fine grained permission to access location to applications and Android has a global setting)
• Encrypted communication. Like when accessing your email.
• Publicly available issue list. Like Android issues list. But Symbian, iPhone, Microsoft Windows Mobile and BlackBerry being closed platforms do not have public available issue lists
• Easy and Smooth Upgradeable Operating System. (Google Android has too many quirks when upgrading like the problems with the inverted colors on the camera of the Nexus One on the 2.1 to 2.2 update. Google Android just do not seem to take much care of upgrades)

Conclusion:

• iPhone: Yes. Apple iOS 4 added missing the features that make iPhone a usable phone like multitasking and spell checker (take a look at Apple iOS 4 Keynote). Still you may want to read: Top 10 Reasons Why the iPhone Is NO BlackBerry. iPhone is an extremely closed platform that is not worth following. Apple App Store does not even allow GPL software. Just, be aware the way Apple sells their products.
• BlackBerry: Yes. BlackBerry Torch 9800 is the first BlackBerry to have a decent WebKit based browser based on BlackBerry OS 6. There is also Linux Syncing for BlackBerrys. crackberry.com is a good site for blackberry news.
• Nokia: No. Nokia seems to not target high demanding users. It is not acceptable to have memory full crashes of applications because of bad memory management done by Symbian phones. I tried some things to workaround Nokia Symbian memory problems with no luck. They are going to feature efficient data storage using SQLite in Symbian OS 9.4 or later but it is too little too late. Symbian OS became open source but they are not really trying to build a community as their bug tracker requires registration, most bugs are restricted and they only keep new bugs instead of importing all the old ones. Nokia kills Symbian OS for their high end phones. Now that Nokia releases N900 that seems like a decent mobile phone. They declare the underlying platform is dead.  Now with Windows Phone they are entering a dangerous path because of the lack of features of Windows Phone.
• Microsoft Windows Phone: No. The old Windows Mobile failed to compete with BlackBerry and Microsoft decided to discontinue it. Microsoft agrees Microsoft Windows Mobile is a failure. Microsoft Windows Phone seems to have lagged behind the other players and lacks a lot of important features other makes have. Microsoft Windows Phone 7 lacks too many features to even look at it right now, so they better hurry up or the may have to quit the smartphone market for the second time.
• Motorola: No, as Motorola does not allow people to customize their smartphones. Motorola Tells Customer to “Buy Elsewhere” if They Want Custom ROMs.
• Sony Ericsson: Since Sony Ericsson moved away from Symbian and Windows Mobile towards Android, they seem to have a competitive edge again. Sony Ericsson does not follow any standards so they lose many points for power users. There are some phones that use standards, like using microSD instead of Sony proprietary Memory Stick.
• Google Android Yes, Android 4 almost catch up to iOS, but before you buy an Android device be aware of the huge list of bugs that Android needs to fix so you can know if it fits your needs. Google wasted too many resources on things like live wallpapers, cool startup and shutdown animations, 3D galleries, improving support for games and trying to replace Java with native code because of the Oracle lawsuit, but that made them lag too much from iOS because Google did not fix bugs or added requested features. Android seem to not target the enterprise or high demanding users (Android lacks external storage encryption support and backup/restore). Google should not allow carriers to use the Android brand on crappy products (Why My Mom Bought an Android, Returned It, and Got an iPhone). Some Android Google Applications have less functionality than the Web ones (Contacts lacks birthdate edit), I also miss notifications since I mostly have the phone sound turned off and the vibration is so sort and not repeating that I miss reminders and some minor clicking sound when playing low samplerate MP3s like voice. Google misses to implement search for all the information stored in the phone, the only one thing you would expect from Google. Android also has some major bugs like Issue 2719: Issues with character encoding of non-ascii multi-message SMS and useful ones like per connection HTTP Proxy configuration. Also, it is too common for Google sync to have problems. Android also lacks a month view datepicker (with the current android datepicker it is difficult to pick a date).

phonedog does some decent mobile phones video reviews.

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