Tom, our noble leader and Top Dog, tipped us Editors off late last night to a forum post by which all other forum posts should be judged. So long as you're not a stickler for grammar and punctuation, that is ;-)
Seriously, PhoneDog reader "elserg" went above and beyond in outlining the happy dilemma facing Sprint customers this holiday season. With all of these super tricked out smartphones supposedly ready to launch, which one should he be hoping that Santa (or Hannukah Harry, or whoever) leaves under his pillow this year?
elserg does a really great job of running down the pros and cons of several current and rumored-to-be forthcoming Sprint smartphones: Palm Pre, HTC Touch Pro2, HTC Hero, and Samsung "Q." I'll ignore the headline I wrote for this post and let you read elserg's thoughts in their original format, instead of plagarizing them to include here. But I will run down a few highlights with a few follow-up comments of my own:
Palm Pre: Pretty much agree with elserg across the board. Palm and Sprint really need that app catalog to ramp up in a hurry already.
HTC Touch Pro2: TouchFlo 3D 2.6 has been leaked online and it looks even better than version 2.5. I totally agree that the "slide out tilting screen keyboard rocks."
HTC Hero: I'm 99% sure that the Sprint version will look different than the versions currently on the market in other countries. How? I don't know. But Sprint has a history of giving HTC phones cosmetic makeovers (remember last year's Touch Pro?), and I may have heard a rumor somewhere about this being in the works for when Hero drops on the Now Network. Hopefully they'll keep the sweet Teflon coating that elserg refers to. And, oh yeah, HTC is hard at work at a firmware update meant to make that Sense UI faster and smoother. Good times!
Samsung Q: elserg gets it right when he says, "The biggest question here is what exactly is this?" He then references a few widespread rumors about Sprint's next high-end Sammy, namely Android, an AMOLED display, and HD video capabilities. I actually think the "Q" he describes is two different devices: "Q" or "Instinct Q," running Android and "Instinct HD" with AMOLED and HD video capture/playback that runs a custom feature phone OS similar to the ones found on the current Instinct and Instinct s30.
elserg ends his post with a request aimed at me: "In addition if any of the phonedog staff is reading this, a dogfight between the touch pro and any of these phones would be great in helping people decide if the upgrade is worth the money or is it bettwer to wait for next year?"
Sounds like a plan, dude! And thanks for the awesome post.