30 Days of Geek #7: Preferred smartphone platform. And which do you use?

I’ve decided to partake in Jethro Carr’s 30 Days of Geek challenge, so I’ll be writing a post a day on my geekiness for an entire month! You can find all the posts in one spot here.

My preferred smartphone platform is Windows Mobile (now renamed Windows Phone to avoid the whole ‘Cell phone’ / ‘Mobile phone’ naming debacle). There are a few reasons for my choice (mostly illogical):

  • It’s an open platform. What I mean for this is that anybody can develop an application for the phone without having to prostrate themselves before Steve Jobs. Note that just because you can write an application, doesn’t mean that anybody does, which is slightly disappointing.
  • The operating system doesn’t treat you as if you’re 6. Every setting imaginable is open for the tinkering. Again, doesn’t mean you should.
  • It crashes occasionally, usually while trying to make a call. No computer would be complete without crashing or misbehaving at an inconvenient time.

My old phone was an HTC Touch Pro2, which I reviewed here. It was an awesome phone. At the time I bought it, it had the highest resolution of any mobile out there (as far as I’m aware), a QWERTY keyboard, 3G, WiFi, GPS, basically every feature under the sun. Unfortunately it cost a fair bit, and once I realised I never actually took advantage of all these features, I sold it and bought an entire high-end desktop computer. Which brings me to my current phone…

I currently use a Nokia C5. And what can I say about it? It’s a Nokia. It works, it makes calls and does text messaging, and I can check Facebook if I’m bored on the bus. And that’s what I’ve realised. A mobile phone is still, essentially, a phone. Maybe I’m getting old (I hope not), but maybe it just doesn’t matter so much any more.