More phone lust (not me)...

You've got to feel for us Palm owners/diehards.
It seems barely a week (or even a day) goes by without a new latest, greatest smartphone from HTC, Apple, Nokia, Samsung et al - indeed Nokia have brought out about 30 new phones in the last month. Well, not they haven't but they have brought out a few new ones lately, including the E66 which is getting Murray at Palm-Mac and Shaun at PDA 24/7 all excited.

I can't say it does much for me. Nokia phones are undoubtedly great phones with a good pedigree, but frankly I think they're all a bit dull (of course that's entirely a personal opinion). I certainly wouldn't at this point in time want to swap my Centro, HTC Vox or any other smartphone (inc. the iPhone - which I don't have, and don't anyone start arguing it's "smartphone" credentials) for a Nokia E66.

Frankly, one of the problems with HTC and Nokia particularly is all their devices are starting to look alike, a problem long ago levelled at Palm and the Treo range. Now there's nothing per se wrong with that, but it does make everything samey and frankly are they really any better than a previous iteration of largely the same innards for 90% of the population who just want a phone that can take pictures and maybe keep a few contacts/play a bit of music on?

Murray makes a very interesting and astute observation (as usual), which is that many of these reviews saying how wonderful the latest device is, come from people who get given 30 devices a week to review, so the actual time they spend on any individual device is pretty short.

What would be much better, is to get a few long term "road tests" going. See if all the glitz and enthusiasm is still there after 3 months daily use (I'd volunteer for that by the way if anyone's listening and wants to send some shiny devices my way!). That might stop us people in the ordinary world rolling our eyes every week or so when we here or see the term "...in my opinion this is the best device since last Thursday", swiftly followed by, "...I've since found out it doesn't make the tea".