I’m sporting the awesome palm centro. Yeah, I downgraded from the HTC Tilt ages ago because I kept breaking it and I wanted an easy phone for a while. Now I am drooling and chomping at the bit as my eyes scan over the vast array of smart phones. But in a market flooded with ’smart’ phones and ‘crack’ berries – Picking a phone has become almost as complex as picking a car. You need as seamless a transition as possible. It has to be faster, smaller, thinner, lighter, more durable and be, well, MORE.

I’m looking at several things that are key: touch screen – slab phone is preferred – email, texting, mobile documents, takes photos, social media connection and it has to have some cool apps and potential. Now, potential is misleading. When I say I want potential, I want it to be a ‘first adopters’ kind of item. I want to be leading tech trending and I want people to stop me and ask ‘What is that?’ or say ‘Oh, that is so cool. I want one’.

So here is where we are at when it comes to phones that are flooding the market and doing well.

Blackberry

‘Crack’berries – I’m not going to consider them at all. Why? Because the palm Centro has the same dedicated keyboard and the little tictac keys drive me crazy now.

iPhone

As much as I hate to admit it, I have been considering an iPhone for some time. Why don’t I have one yet? Because I don’t like the apple trend. I’m sorry, I am not an ‘apple fan boy’ or ‘fangirl’ as would be in my case. However, I have to recognize some aspects:

Pros: Great web experience, multi-touch is pretty awesome, it’s now extremely cost-available to just about everyone, the app store has a crazy amount of apps, it is a slab phone and I really like slab phones. Now the cons: They break easy. I have known several owners of iPhones to break the screens within the first week or at least the first month from the simplest drop. That is scary. It is a monopoly – nothing open source there – the app market is flooded (lots of crap and not alot of free stuff), it was trending three years ago – now everyone and their dog has one. And last but not least – this product wont get any better. This is it for the iphone. The only thing they can do past what they already have done is include a butler to carry it around for you and tell you that you are wonderful every ten minutes. iPhone is no longer leading, it’s lagging. There has to be something else…

LG Prada

Now, I loved this phone the first second I saw it. Why? I’m a lover of fashion and it is the ‘Milan’ of phones. What can it do? It’s pretty much a phone, with some neat touch screen and a few little gadgets to entertain. But it’s not really a smart phone. It seems to have shody construction, not customizable, poor reviews and the list goes on. I don’t really care. It is a full touch screen, only a few select buttons at the very bottom, and it says Prada on it. Okay, so this is a very ‘label whore’ kind of phone. What are the cons? It doens’t work with GSM Sim chips. So, I can’t use it. Would I? Yeah. It was pretty and shiny and I haven’t seen one person with it (maybe because as a phone it sucks) Darn…my search continues.

HTC Tilt 2

Well hello wonderful. You are all kinds of beautiful.Ever since the HTC Tilt first edition I have been in love with HTC. They put out consistently good products (in my opinion). It does just about everything the iPhone does and then some. Pros: touch screen, slide out full keyboard, great for email, texting, customizable and it is a set up I am used to. All around, a great phone. Cons: The keyboard, while thinner than the last two editions, still makes the phone thick. And I know this phone, it is just a skinnier, prettier version of that phone I kept dropping and breaking. Okay, one time I got stuck in a rain storm so that is not really fair to the phone but, as I was saying, I know this phone. I want something shiny and new.

HTC Pure

Also great. Not just great, it is a slab phone, no keyboard, still by HTC and it seems very user friendly. It is pretty much the same phone as the Tilt2 except slicked down without the keyboard. Just your average sexy slab phone. Apparently, reviews say it has a lot of screen-sticking, randomly turns off and is generally ‘posessed’ by some higher being and does whatever it wants. I’m not a fan of ‘butt dialing’ so let’s keep looking…

Did I mention I am the ultimate Google FanGirl? And I love HTC?….well, of course I would never have thought the two things I love so much in life would merge…

We have our winner. Say hello to …

Google’s Nexus One

An Andriod phone by Google and HTC. I have died and gone to phone heaven.

I’m actually very suprised I didn’t know this phone existed. I had heard that Google had an android phone called ‘Droid’ (or something) but I didn’t know this was it. Actually, this seems to be Googles second go at an android phone. And this one seems to be a real winner. Why? Let’s go over it all here…

* Slab Phone

* Full Touch Screen except one click-roller-ball (I can deal with that)

* Google Voice is easily added and Free: Transcribes Voicemail automatically (YES! I hate listening to my voicemail)

* Google Maps is pre-installed (What?! You can get a dash attachment for it and set it up as a GPS for your car too? Sweet!)

* Gmail accounts (multiple) are added during your set up (This is a biggie for me: I’m constantly screening multiple email accounts.)

* Some really neat paid and/or free apps in the Marketplace including a neat ‘lighter’ one that acts like a real lighter which I can use during concerts (awesome!)

* Browser is quick – Facebook/YouTube/Media Rich websites are displayed in full browser in amazing time. Super!

* Comes with video tutorials instead of a book (Thank you, I read enough through out the day)

* Wallpapers are ‘Live’ meaning they respond to touch. You will have to watch one of the ‘commercials’ to understand. But it is awesome.

* I consider this the leader in phone technology at the moment. We should be moving toward open-source, free and faster. Nexus One does that.

Cons: If you are not on the TMobile network, then you are going to cry. This bad boy is 550.00 at the moment. That is a big price difference from the easy-cheesy 100.00  (8 gig – with service contract) for the iPhone but the difference is the customizations and free services offered on the Nexus One. The custimization and fluid transition with Google services is important because a majority of my life is stored via Google. Please, spare me the ‘1984′ speech about world domination. Google makes my life easier.

Overall, I’m favoring the Nexus One but am going to wait. It seems AT&T is getting ready to offer android phones (See press release here) and I would love to see how that goes. For now, I will deal with the tic-tac keys.

When I get the Nexus One, I will write a review of it live in my hands after I have had it for a little while and have become fully aquainteted. After all, my phone is my constant companion. It is my computer away from my computer. I need to keep up to date on my email, banking, appointments, stay direction oriented and still do all the regular phone stuff like talking, checking voice-mail and texting. The Nexus One and I will have a lot of bases to cover.

Thanks Google and Thanks HTC, for teaming up and making an awesome product. Now..let’s see if the product-promising-the-moon can deliver in real life. Look for my full review on how all this shopping around turns out! Thanks for reading!