Not too long ago I wrote about how I acquired an HTC Mogul off my girlfriend who got it from a friend of hers who now works for Sprint, and whom got her in on the new SERO plan which led to her buying an HTC Hero, or rather, I did, it was her Xmas present this year. I was currently on my fourth lifetime phone, my LG Rumor. My first cell phone on Verizon in 2003, an Audiovox something-or-other, then to an LG VX 6000 also on Verizon in 2004, then switching to Sprint in 2006 and getting an LG Fusic, and then the LG Rumor in 2008. I’ve been mostly satisfied with LG over the past three phones I’ve used and though I had to switch carriers because Verizon is a bunch of douchebags, I’ve been happy with Sprint ever since, they have fairly good coverage, good call signal and quality, and a damn near decent data network everywhere except in my apartment, which is really the building’s fault more than Sprint.

This phone was my first real smartphone, having passed up the chance to get one on the last round due to lack of funds and not much out at the time. I’m rather glad I waited considering all the new phones out now are so much nicer. The Mogul is kinda old though by standard, being one of the first HTC smartphones out a couple years ago, now pretty much eclipsed by the Pro Touch and Pro Touch 2 along with the Diamond, as far as WinMo phones go, and the Hero for Android phones. It comes with WinMo 6.1 which is okay, but pretty clunky and I found it rather hard to pick up in the first five minutes, where I had no trouble picking up Ashlynn’s Hero and getting around pretty easily. I’ve since then swapped the boot loader and flashed it with a custom version of WinMo 6.5 which is a lot sleeker and works a little better in some places, but the speed of the phone is still pretty laggy and I’ve found I often have to reboot several times just to get things working again.

For data such as SMS, TXT, MMS, Web, and so on, it is an excellent phone, with threaded chat-style messaging and plenty of apps and extras. However the phone part is pretty terrible, the contacts and dialer is just so clumsy to me and perhaps that is my missing a physical keypad, but I’ve found trying to dial numbers or receive calls that I fumble around and hit wrong buttons. I ended up replacing the stock dialer for a Diamond skinned one which is nicer, but not by much.

Now the person she took the phone from might want it back, and even if he doesn’t, I apparently am able to get a $150 discount off of a new phone now through Sprint, and I am thinking of buying a new phone with part of my next paycheck as my sort of gift to myself this year, since I largely did not buy anything significant for myself this year and it will only cost me about 180-ish after one of those awesome 10-16 week rebates like the one I am waiting on for Ashlynn’s phone. I’m between buying one of three phones, the HTC Hero, Samsung Moment, and Palm Pre.

I’m partial to Android, and I say this not only because I’ve played with the Hero, but because I’ve been interested in it’s development since it first came out, as being a platform that could deliver everything the iPhone is known for, to everyone else withour having to pay the “Apple Tax” and sell your soul to AT&T. “Apps” are the new thing now and there seems to be no shortage of things you can do in Android just the same as Apple, and likewise for Palm’s WebOS. While certain aspects of WebOS do interest me, the main draw of Android is the fact it is considered an open OS, and thus many different companies will be in on it versus propitiatory systems like Apple and Palm’s OS’. HTC does seem to be edging out on this from what I read largely due to their Sense technology and nice virtual keyboards, which is what the Hero operates on and makes it much more comparable to the iPhone. Hoenstly while I like the concept of VK’s, I’ve been used to the physical QWERTY keyboards like on my current Rumor, and thus I am looking more closely at the Samsung Moment, which also runs Android 1.5 and has many of the same features at the Hero, but has a physical slide out keyboard. So far I am edging the most towards this for that reason, that and Ashlynn doesn’t want me to get the same phone as her, but that isn’t a factor, if I really wanted the Hero I’d get it anyway, but the Moment looks like something I can dig and if worse comes to worse, return it before the 30 days and grab a Hero.

The other part about my switch to a smartphone is I now use Google Apps for my domain, and thus I have my entire contact book on my phone and e-mail and calendars on Google, which right now is synced to the Mogul, but can easily be synced to Android. At that point I am looking to IMAP up my email and also grab email from my work address into the phone. I also would like a decent working Facebook and Twitter app so that I can just check it and not need the TXT messages sent to the phone, because they got annoying after awhile and I actually stopped all SMS Notifications from friends except comments to my posts recently with the Mogul, however I am still getting Twitter. FB is annoying because they don’t have one number for incoming messages, they change numbers so you can comment to a specific post, and it’s annoying because on my Rumor I could not put FB messages in their own folder, and on the Mogul the threaded messages are useless because it doesn’t use the same number. Considering how I really don’t care that much about everyone’s updates, and I am in front of a computer most of the time, I’d like an app to check it once and awhile, much easier.

So Wednesday I will probably order a Samsung Moment and hopefully have it by Friday to play with, and if it sucks, I’ll send it back for the Hero. I was fair in giving the Mogul a good shot, and it’s not a terrible phone, but I’m fairly certain something newer and not WinMo might do the trick for me.

Course I’d love to give the Pro2 a shot, but $350? Uh, no.