“What Phone Should I Get, Marty?”
I know a lot about technology. So I hear questions like this a lot. The one I’ve been hearing the most lately concerns what phone to get. Nearly everyone I know is making the leap to smartphones. Even family members who had a tough enough time with flip phones have jumped to smartphone platforms. Thanks to the iPhone and everything it ushered in, smartphones have catered to a more consumer platform over the last few years and it’s really hitting mainstream now.
It’s really easy to get labeled in your choice. Everyone knows one of these labeled people too. The iPhone guy. The Android guy. The Blackberry guy (he’s persistent). The Windows Phone 7 guy (he’s interesting but no one talks to him so know one knows that). That makes it hard to choose. See, most consumers don’t want to be categorized. They want phones that do what they want quickly & easily and work where they need them. Honestly, what prompted this post was a post I read on Penny Arcade that detailed why the artist got a Windows Phone. It intrigued me. He got it based on what he wanted it to do rather than looking at just the platform.
The first thing you want to do is make a list of the things you want to do with the phone. For example, my own list:
1. Messaging 2. Phone 3. Email 4. Music 5. Apps 6. Games
And in all honesty, 2-4 might be a tie. I don’t use too many specialized apps and, though I’ve tried, I’m really not all that into gaming on my phone as fun as some of them are. I could get away with really any platform (except Blackberry) with those. Since I’m pretty heavily invested in Google services, Android is most likely my platform of choice with iOS as a close second. That said, it’s becoming clear to me that Blackberry is almost dead in the corporate world. I’m seeing a lot of iPhones and, surprisingly, a lot of Windows Phones.
Windows Phone 7 might be my favorite as an exclusive work phone. It’s fast, stylish, works extremely well with Exchange and its Outlook app is top notch for corporate email. As a bonus, it has some really cool apps, if the selection is a bit limited.
My main point is when shopping for a phone, make sure the phone fits you as opposed to fitting yourself to the phone. If you want to be an Android person just to stick it to Apple, that’s fine.
Just make sure you can live without what Apple’s iOS brings to the table. It’s pretty nice.
