Cell Phones

This is going to turn into more of a RANT instead of anything else, but I'm surprised yet again by the lack of forsight in the corporate world, it seems that they want two things. One is to push a product to market very quickly, and two is to charge as much as possible for services.

I have been looking for a new cell phone for the past several months, unfortunately due to my location I am stuck with Verizon. While Verizon offers superior coverage to any other carrier in the area, it offers horrible phones. I'm currently using the Motorola Q, the Q is a phone that is great for basics, but there are several features that make you cringe, just because you know that they could have gotten it right. I've played with the iPhone and despite the people jumping up and down screaming that they have to have it, Apple also missed the boat. The latest phone that I was looking at was the LG Dare VX9700, it seems that this phone is lacking something as simple as IMAP, go figure, anyone wanting to use this phone, outside of an MP3 player, would want IMAP. Why can't manufacturers build phones with the essentials, here's my list of essentials:

1. Good Quality Phone
2. Excellent Battery Life
3. Email Cleint IMAP/POP (Ability to handle multiple accounts)
4. Zoomable web browser (Ability to handle Flash)
5. Touch Screen (this is just for screen real-estate if nothing else)
6. MP3/Video
7. Ability to Sync with Outlook
8. Wi-Fi capability
9. Bluetooth headset
10. Bluetooth modem (the Q can act as a modem if it's tethered, but not via bluetooth, that's just bass-ackwards if you ask me)
11. Ring Customizations, including one that works off the clock on the phone, so I can have the phone use a different ring tone when I'm asleep (either very load or off)
12. Mapping Utility that utilizes the phones GPS system

I'm sure there are items that I'm missing, but this seems to be the basic list, that keeps getting left off. The manufacturers are selling form over substance, we're getting some very sexy looking phones that are dumb. Personally I'm not one who will take sexy if it's dumb.