Recently I decided to upgrade to a smart phone; a decision that perhaps many others are on the brink of making and I thought I would share my experience. This is a particularly tumultuous time to be choosing a new phone as there are so many competitors vying for your cash; how are you supposed to make a reasonable decision when you are constantly being bombarded with in-your-face advertisements about how great every new phone is? Not to mention the now-epic feud going on between AT&T and Verizon; the commercials for these two industry giants seem to be getting more and more personal as the boasting for best phone and network continues. It can be tough to block out all the noise, but after reading about my experience you will have the knowledge and techniques for finding the phone that’s right for you.

The journey begins with a simple phone, the Helio Heat. I had purchased this phone years ago and was really happy with the service and billing. The phone didn’t do much, but it did serve my needs and made clear calls while almost never dropping them. Things were going great, but then Helio got bought out by Virgin Mobile and things took a serious turn for the worse. The service became spotty, voice mail ceased to function properly alerting me about thirty days late that I actually had new messages waiting. The next feature to go was picture messaging; friends would send me things and they simply wouldn’t come through, but I was still being charged for them. This lead to massive problems with billing; I was on a very basic $40/month plan, the same plan I had been on for nearly two years with no problems, but suddenly bills were coming in that were over $100. Three times I had to contact the company to get them to fix issues with billing. After the third time I decided I had had enough.

I spent nearly a month trying to decide which phone would be the best option. Initially I was struggling to decide between the Motorola Droid and Apple’s iPhone 3GS. The Droid was relatively new and seemed to have a lot of features that the iPhone lacked including a physical keyboard and free voice guided navigation. For me, the physical keyboard was an important feature. I had used the iPhone’s touchscreen keyboard and constantly had to retype messages because it would put up the wrong character; even in landscape mode, it just isn’t very accurate, at least not compared to a keyboard with physical buttons to press.

I began asking around and talking to friends who had the phones. I asked what they liked or disliked about the phones to try and get an idea of what sort of problems or perks I would be getting with each. This was all well and good, but each person recommended the phone they had purchased; surprise! I decided to ask some friends who had neither a Droid or iPhone to get an outsider opinion. This only made things more complicated as what I actually got were suggestions on even more phones to consider! My number of options doubled from just two phones to four! I was now also looking at the Palm Pre and Google’s Nexus One was just days from release!

One helpful resource was this chart a friend had sent me. It shows the features of all four phones for a nice side-by-side comparison; including cost of ownership for two years. Looking at this; the Pre started to take the lead. It seemed to be a nice, middle-ground in terms of features and well ahead of the Droid and iPhone in terms of price. I talked to a friend with a Pre and got to try it out for myself. The phone seemed great overall, but I was disappointed with the portrait keyboard and found it difficult to hit the right buttons; I still liked the Pre, but wasn’t entirely sold on it.

That weekend I went to the mall to get some hands on time with the other phones. The first place I went was the Verizon store to check out the Droid. This was a big disappointment for me. When I was first beginning my search, the Droid was the phone I was leaning towards the most. I like the Android platform and had been tinkering with some development on it at home. I also liked that it had a physical keyboard and a good camera. Another plus was that it was on the Verizon network and not AT&T. However, once I got my hands on the phone I immediately knew I wasn’t going to be buying one. The phone felt clunky; it was heavy and awkward to use. The keys on the keyboard were terrible and had no give when pushed; it was basically like using a touch keyboard, but worse because you got zero response. I left the Verizon store and had limited my options to three; the Pre, iPhone 3GS and the Nexus One.

Next I hit up the T-Mobile booth and inquired about the newly-released Nexus One phone. The manager already had one and let me play around with it for a bit; I was really impressed. The interface was smooth, fast and ultra responsive. I left with an informational pamphlet about the phone that had detailed feature lists and pricing information. The unlimited plan was pretty cheap compared to other companies; the Nexus One was now in the lead.

At home I did a bit more research on the phone. I checked out T-Mobile’s website and was put off by their seemingly sparse 3G coverage. A few more searches revealed a lot of complaints with the phone and the service being received. I don’t know anyone that owns the phone so I can’t substantiate the claims, but I read enough of them to make me think twice.

That brought me to the iPhone; among the people I talked to about phones, iPhone users seemed to have the least complaints. The main issue I heard from them was that AT&T wasn’t the best network to be on, but that overall it was pretty good. Still, the iPhone lacked a physical keyboard and that was a big drawback for me. Also, I’m not an Apple fanatic; I own precisely zero Apple hardware products. Note that I don’t dislike them either, I simply don’t see anything different from them than what I already have and I do dislike the abrasive attitudes of the Apple faithful.

The iPhone interface, like the Nexus One, is smooth and responsive. The installation of apps is simple and convenient and it takes pretty good pictures for a phone. The pricing wasn’t bad either; I could shave off about $15/month by limiting my texting plan to 200 texts per month. That might not work for everyone, but for me that’s plenty.

After spending a month researching phones and handling them for myself, I was finally ready to make my purchase. Which phone did I ultimately choose? The iPhone 3GS. For the reasons mentioned above; it does what it was designed to do and does it in a more user friendly way than the other phones I had tried. So far I’ve been very satisfied with the phone; I’m still adjusting to the touchscreen keyboard, but it is getting easier and I feel I made the right choice. The right choice can of course vary from person to person so if you’re considering upgrading to a smartphone I would encourage you to take the steps that I did to determine which phone is best for you. Talk to people who own the phones, and most importantly, make sure you handle the phones yourself before making the decision! Go by yourself to the phone stores and ask the sales people to leave you alone for a bit with the phone; that way you can concentrate on the way it feels in your hands and you won’t be pressured into making a decision on the spot.

One other piece of advice I have is to not worry about new phones coming out. There will always be new phones looming near on the horizon so eventually you’ll just have to take the plunge. Decide what features are important and buy the phone that works best for you.