Buying a smart phone

I'm sure this has been done to death, but this is technology, so anything older than yesterday is obsolete

Anyways, I'm finally getting on board the smart phone thing, need a new phone and have decided to advance from the dark ages. So I need phone recommendations but since I know a lot of this is personal preferences and opinions, I thought I'd outline a few things...

1. Its for a small business so I need businessy helper stuff
2. I like the open source idea of Android but what are the HTC phones that are all that use it at the moment like?
3. The Nokia N97 by most accounts is still all buggy like the first gen iPhones. True or False?
4. I spoken to a few folk who are sold on Blackberrys. I haven't really had a play, your thoughts? What about the Storm touch screen one?
5. Heard rumours of the Google phone but don't know the latest and not sure I want a first gen one anyway on accounts of the buggy possibility

Any new developments on things lately? Stuff coming out, getting improved, anything head and shoulders above the rest, anything I should know before I buy a new phone?

Cheers

Nokia e series perhaps or (dare i say it) an iphone. I really dont like Blackberrys and those people that i have met that do seem to all be newbies to the smartphone/pocketpc thing so of course are happy with them.... maybe if we had the blackberry <> exchange server connector id consider it but theres better things out there.

Google phones - not sure I would be waiting for a bit but it depends how long youre going to be stuck with the one you buy.

I like the Blackberrys - just not the Storm. Curve 9700 is the best phone I've played with I reckon, and I know a few Vodafone sales guys that swear by BB's over anything.

Everyone I know who loves their Blackberry has one that's linked to their corporate Exchange or what have you. I don't know anyone who had one who got full use out of it without that.

Remember that the Google phone (Nexus One) is made by HTC anyway, so I'd hardly call it first gen. And yeah, you'll be waiting a while for it to be officially on sale in this part of the world.

Virtually everyone I know that has done the smartphone dance in the last few years has soon dumped whatever piece of crap they started with and ended up with an iPhone.

Oh, N97 is about 100 times buggier and shitty than first gen iPhones, which were actually pretty bug free, unless you were jailbreaking it. If you want a true Nokia smartphone, look E-series.

FFS get an iPhone.

It works really well at everything you want to do and it's pretty and you get +5 creativity.

Yeah I rock an e-series Nokia (E71) and really really like it.
You haven't really laid out what you want it for - E71 is great for email, texting, fassbooking, maps, web-browsing ain't bad with Opera Mobile (iPhone would kick its ass there I imagine). Best tool in the world is the Personal/Business mode switching - during work day I have nice formal looking background image with Exchange mail and calendar syncing on to home screen. End of day, one button switches to different background image and Gmail syncing on the home screen with a different set of apps to jump to. Number one reason people hate Blackberry is that they're constantly being reminded of work - this totally avoids that. Don't know why more phones don't do it.
But if you're more after mediadriven stuff like music, video etc and intense web then iPhone all the way.

Given you've said it's for small business I can recommend looking at the E72 (new version of E71) just off my experience. From now you get free GPS voice navigation with that too.
Don't touch WinMo unless it's heavily heavily hidden by something like HTC Sense UI. It's still awful.
No experience with Android personally.

Nah, I won't touch WinMo with a 10ft barge pole.

What I want it for is to be able to run all the businessy bits and pieces like email, web browsing, maps is a bonus, and the big things are reliability and speed. Oh, and the ability to open email attachments on the phone itself would probably be enough to sway me to one phone over another.

Media stuff isn't a major major concern, youtube would be nice but it's not a big factor. Music would be a bonus however, and lots of internal storage. That mode switching thing sounds like an awesome feature, but because I'll be working for myself I'll pretty much be on call 24/7 anyway.

With Android and the HTC phones, are the HTCs reliable? Is the Android system worth the possible shortfalls of the handset?

Oh, and I know this probably sounds dumb, but a 3.5 headphone jack. I'm sick to the back teeth of the proprietary connectors on my current Sony Ericsson that you have to charge and attach handsfree too. The connectors have fucked out making handsfree impossible and charging my phone a pain the ass

iPhone imo... but youll be one of the sheep (like myself).

Ah well, thankfully with the ubiquitous iPhone everybody looks like a sheep since it's impossible to know who got theirs when. Now you all keep quiet about it and I'll pretend I've had it for ages

Oh noes I have the same phone as other people however will I live with myself

If you didn't want to be a sheep, then why did you get it bob?

Same phone as masses = more high five ops on the street

Errr im fine with it, I chose the best phone for the best plan for me at the time. Its not perfect and im no fan boy but it does the things i need reasonably well most of the time. Reception is a pain on it and battery life could be better.

Some people have a chip on their shoulder about it and there are certainly many people got it for the image though god knows what image that is.

I'm going to go ahead and call bullshit on this.

Sure the first iteration was a completely rushed balls up, but PR2 has been pretty bloody stable from a heavy users perspective (mine)

Sure I have pretty biased brand loyalty, but I'll certainly call it as it is on here in a completely non biased manner.

IMO based on what you're after (and I'm guessing you want the easiest device to get up and running) I would suggest a Nokia E Series OR an iPhone.
If touch screen and media are the major driving factors then absolutely go for the iPhone. If email and fairly tight business management tools are more important go the E72. I'd suggest the N97 if you were looking at a crossover between the two, but would recommend that you compare it hands on with the iPhone, if you have the opportunity, as both have very different interfaces (both hardware and software)

I'm not sure I really like the E-series Nokias tbh, just from what I've seen of them. I like to have some of the bells and whistles to play with but need the business functionality too and if I was going to go down the QWERTY keyboard path I'd probably go Blackberry. The N97 I liked because it is that crossover, I've just heard so many bad things.

I'm really still not 100% sold on the iPhone because I'd like to be able to personalise things more than you can with them. I really like the HTC Hero but it's not available through a carrier here (Vodafone has the Magic but I just don't know about that either) so I would have to buy it outright for about $600, then put it the same plan that would give me a 16GB iPhone for free...

e75?

Hmmm, maybe, still think I'd take an iPhone over it though.

iPhone.

If looking at the N97 route, then I'd certainly suggest the N97 Mini also, so far I've found it to run a lot smoother than the original N97, but in a slightly smaller form factor.
Many of the N97 issues stem from lack of free RAM which the Mini negates due to increased RAM availability.
I don't think it's available in OZ via standard channels yet though.

Happy to wait a bit longer, my phone still works as is. Will have to do some more research

why not try to buy a wm phone? You can get heaps software to install it than other systems.

we got some HTC WM phones, with a recent update they are better but the reception is shit.