Part II - What's the Biggest Missing Feature for your Smartphone?

[Mike Temporale]

Last week we talked about the Biggest Missing Feature for your Smartphone and I have to admit that I'm more than a little surprised to see so many of you pick a software based feature. I was expecting to hear all about how Windows Mobile Smartphones are lacking in design and style. I truly expected to see people suggest more memory, GPS, USB 2.0, better phone designs like a slider, or perhaps a flip-phone. Or what about a touchscreen or slide/fold-out keyboard?

Instead, there was loads of posts about what new features you would like to see on the software front and that's ok, I guess. I've always taken the approach that the software can be updated or added at any time. While hardware is a little permanent and harder to change and it's a much greater cost to upgrade your phone, but adding software is cheap and easy. So this week I want to take a step back and ask a more general question. I want to know if you're biggest missing feature is hardware based or software based. Take the poll and let us know. (Here's hoping the hardware crowd speaks up this time. )
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"I have no special talents, I am only passionately curious" - Albert Einstein

[egads]

What I'd like to see should be simple, but we'll never see it:

A flip phone with a touch screen.
A phone that sounds at least as good as a wired phone.
A phone/network that does not drop calls in tunnels & subways.
A phone without a camera, Wifi, GPS, IM, email, and web browser.
A service plan that cost $12 US a month
Phones that cost $400-$500 and are not given away so only the people who truly need them use them.

I know I'm in the minority here, but I sit at a desk all day and all I need my phone to be is a phone and a PIM, nothing more. I think smartphones in general are geared to buisness people who are out of the office a lot, not to people who just use them for phones...

Oops, forgot to add I want a screen you can actually read outside in the sun...

[macattack]

I couldn't answer the poll question because my answer includes both hardware and software.

What I would like to see is Office compatibility out-of-the-box. And since editing a Word document on the keys of a standard phone would be beyond painful, I would like to see a slider QWERTY keyboard. I guess the form factor would be a candy bar design, with a standard set of number keys, soft keys, joystick, etc. when held like a standard phone. The keyboard could slide out from the side a la the K-Jam, automatically re-orienting the screen to landscape mode (I think LG makes a couple phones like this for Cingular as well). Taking anything remotely approaching a detailed note or editing any kind of text document on a smartphone is presently a repetitive strain injury just waiting to happen.

[Jason Dunn]

For me, it's mostly about hardware at this point: I want a clamshell Smartphone that's nice and thin yet still has a great screen. I don't mind the SP5m, but I'm really looking forward to the HTC Star Trek because it seems to have a great physical design.

[Rocco Augusto]

i would like to see more high speed data (3G) phones. also it wouldn't hurt to have phones in several different colors. im always a little bit sad when i see a hot new phone and its just a plain cloudy black/grey

[guapoharry]

Would it be unfair to say the author got the desired answer this time?

On the other hand, my answer to the previous thread was primarily concerned with improvements that could be gained for stuff that exists. I'm weary of anticipating mirages that may appear in a product next year, IF your carrier picks it up.

For example, there was all this buzz on US cingular forums about the Motorola Q, but Verizon seems to have an exclusive on it now. Another unrequited expectation.

The last thread started off like this:

We're all walking around with these incredibly powerful devices in our pockets. Each device has mega-bytes upon mega-bytes of memory, lots of CPU power, beautiful screens, and the list just keeps going on.

Maybe if the tone was a little more neutral, like the end off the thread:

I want to know what is the single biggest missing feature that you want to see added to your next Smartphone. It doesn't matter if your missing feature is hardware or software based,

the answers might have been a little more random.

[Edgar]

I still want my scroll click wheel! You already have a volume "bar", why can't that be a scroll click wheel instead?

And I dont want the Q or a Blackberry. Why can't this great, small, perfect device for a phone be on all phones. Even flip phones. I used it extensively on my old Casio PPC's. It makes one handed operations all that much better and easier.

It's either that, or yet again, some tool has a patent on it and want's his $2 per unit and the manufacturer said no. I'd pay $10 more to get one again.


Ohhh and, like Opti, I hate going to the Mall Kiosks (or awaiting some expensive 'special model') to get carbon fiber, Jerry's Mauve, or any other innovative cover. I'm thinking these case guys are the same ones that make the beige PC cases and black/silver keyboards


-Edgar

[Mike Temporale]

[Mike Temporale]

[Neil]

I just want a phone from HTC that doesn't get dust under the screen

Neil
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Neil Enns
Lead Program Manager
Microsoft Visual Studio