Which Smart Phone Are You?

Have you developed a case of "app envy"? If you are considering moving up to a smart phone, there are so many options that it might seem overwhelming.

Before you jump ship on your current carrier—or you opt for your carrier's upgrade du jour—you should consider how each major phone "platform" matches your personality and life. Be honest with yourself about your comfort level with technology, and what you really want a smart phone to do for you before you drop $200 or more on a phone that will probably lock you into a mobile carrier for the rest of your life.

First, there's the business-appropriate Blackberry. Research In Motion's BlackBerry line , despite the marketing power of Apple and Google, is the leading smart phone on the market.  As I've said before, the Blackberry, in several of its incarnations, is almost ideally designed for boomers.

If you are looking for basic bits of smart phone functionality, and want something that you can use both to handle work e-mail and surf the web, the Blackberry is a safe bet.  While it doesn't have the coolest, shiniest applications, it does have apps for Facebook, Twitter, and other social networks. If the Blackberry was a car, it would be a Hyundai—utilitarian with some of the features you'd expect from the flashier models. And if you like feeling keys under your fingers, Blackberry still makes the best phone for typing.

The Apple iPhone is less about work, and more about media consumption. If it were a car, it would be a Mini Cooper—beautifully designed for fun, but maybe not as home in an executive parking spot. 

Certainly, Apple's Apps Store gives the iPhone a lot of potential. Apple has done a better job than RIM in attracting software developers, even with the company's somewhat draconian approach to controlling what software developers can do on the phone.  The iPhone doesn't just have a camera—it has dozens of photography applications.  And let's not forget that it's also the best phone ever for listening to music on—if only because it's basically a phone grafted onto a portable music player.

There are a few downsides underneath those stylish lines and the thoughtful simplicity of the iPhone.  For one thing, there's the virtual keyboard.  People with larger, or less agile fingers may find typing on the iPhone to be an exercise in typo-masochism.  The auto-correct feature on the iPhone helps some with that, except when it changes words into something other than what you intended.  And then there's the dropped calls. The flaws are survivable, mostly—I've transitioned from a Blackberry to an iPhone, and while I've not regained my typing speed on the Crackberry, I've managed to get up to tolerable speeds of e-mail typing. 

Besides, the iPhone is more about buying into a specific mindset than buying a phone. If you want one device that can handle all of your life, from waking you up in the morning by blaring "Good Day Sunshine"  to lulling you to sleep with video clips from the Tonight Show, the iPhone is up to it.  And think of the accessories.

Google's Android is aimed squarely at those who are attracted to the idea of tinkering with technology. If Google's Android platform were a car, it would be the one Johnny Cash sang about building one piece at a time. In many way, Android is the anti-iPhone—instead of wrapping everything together neatly, it leaves things wide open.

There are dozens of different Android phones, using various versions of Google's operating system for handheld devices.  There are some that come with keyboards, and others, like the NexusOne, that mimic the iPhone's touch-screen minimalism. Because the Android operating system is so flexible, it's drawn the attention of a lot of software developers—so the number of apps on Android has quickly grown to rival the number of apps for Blackberry and iPhone.  And many of those apps work much like the version on the iPhone.

If you're more about apps, already use GMail, and are less concerned with integrating your whole media experience with your phone, Android phones may be for you—especially if you don't mind living on the edge a little.