Choosing a Smartphone Presentation
As this post goes live on the web, I am giving a presentation on How to Choose a Smartphone at the West Sound Technology Association meeting. I’ve actually been working on this presentation since November. Nice to finally give it. You can watch me give the presentation on ustream and/or download the slidedeck:
The presentation covers the various things that go into choosing a smartphone, which unfortunately includes a lot of other things than the phones themselves–the operating systems they run, the network operators that sell them, and so on. It is specific to the United States and the major operators (Verizon Wireless, AT&T, Sprint, T-Mobile). Smaller operators are not included because they are not available in this area. Prepaid operators aren’t included because, quite frankly, none of them are selling smartphones yet 
One of the challenges I had with doing this presentation is that the information relevant to making such a decision changes almost daily. The phones change, either because new ones are introduced, old ones are discontinued, coverage changes, or even available software updates for existing phones. It’s hard enough for someone like me who tracks the industry to sort through it all, much less someone less informed who’s just trying to make an intelligent decision about what they should buy.
The problem is, no matter what you buy today, there’s always going to be something better tomorrow. Thus, whatever you choose to buy, buy the phone for what it can do today, not what you think it might do tomorrow.
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Tags: at&t, smartphone, sprint, Sprint Nextel, t-mobile, verizon Fnord
Comment by tom
not only are the smaller prepaid operators not selling smartphones but several that allow users to bring their own phone have recently starting banning activation of certain models(essentially blackberries, palm and anything with WinMo or android.) this has destroyed the business of a few small shops i know that had built a business almost entirely of activating used high end smartphones on carriers such as pageplus. mostly the customer would get voice and text through the carrier and data over wifi. this it seems is a quite acceptable setup for many. i do believe that it is the underling carriers(such as verizon) that instituted this new ban and not the decision of of the prepaid MVNO’s.
i do have to say though that i have a bit of a seroius problem with an actual phone model requiring a specific rate plan as opposed too a plan for certain feature. any phone should be allowed activated on any plan just without full functionality.
Comment by PhoneBoy
All the operators are now requiring data plans for smartphones. Makes sense they would push this requirement down to their wholesalers also. I am not a fan of this policy myself.
I wanted to cover the prepaid operators in this preso, but there’s actually a lot of them. This preso ran long as it is
Also, since was more a Smartphone focused preso and the prepaid operators don’t typically sell the smartphones, they weren’t a good fit. MetroPCS and Cricket don’t offer service in the Seattle area.
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