The contract has come up on my O2 XDA MiniS, its been a good phone to be honest although I wasn’t sure at first, Windows Mobile is not without its issues for me at least, MMS support is woefully poor (in WM5), the integration with Outlook while great for some is not perfect for me, but there are ways around this such as Gmobilesync for the calendar. All the same, the benefits delivered in terms of flexibility, availability of third party software such as Google Maps Mobile, and increased use of the device as a result make it worth while.

A short while ago the iPhone coverage couldnt be avoided, I’m just thankful its over now, every US blogger of note had themselves worked up into a frenzy over this thing (in another news Kleenex announced a record sales increase for the same period (sorry bad joke)). Me, I can’t see myself parting with that much money for a phone, if I had the money I’d could buy a nice big flat tv for that sort of cash. Additionally, having had the luxury of a full keyboard on my current hand set I can’t bring myself to part with it, I prefer the tactile feedback of a real thumb board to a virtual keyboard, whether it has an Apple symbol attached or not. Someone has been quick to conduct research to prove the value of this tactile feedback as well.

In the perfect world, a replacement handset would have 3G, Wifi, GPS, physical qwerty keyboard, touchscreen and 2 sim card slots so I can ditch the work phone. Closest I can find is the E-ten M700, which has almost everything except the 2 sim card slots. Its either that or the HTC Kaiser which as mentioned on my Google Maps post I have been assured should be released fairly soon on T-Mobile. They both have their positives, the HTC has a better camera, however styling, size and an improved GPS chipset (SiRFstar III) make the E-ten a winner for me, I have a decent camera already. I just need to find a network who’ll carry it now unless I go back on what I said earlier about paying for phones and cough up but its not cheap!

Update (12/11/2007): I bought the Kaiser, click here for the post.