I've read more level headed and rational discussions of mobile devices on this forum than in many of the dedicated ones. At present I'm trying to help my daughter make some decisions about the best way for her to communicate with us here while she's away in Canada. To this end, I've been researching some of the current 'Smart' devices available, with an emphasis on initial cost and economy of regular use.
I get the impression that while iPhones, iPads, HTC Desire/Evo etc. have a lot of interesting and sometimes half-baked features, much of the functionality is skewed to pander to an enthusiastic 'fan' group and simultaneously extract as much in the way of service charges as possible from this clientele and any others who can be drawn into their user-base.
Is this emphasis on glossy profit making features universal, or are there some devices, maybe such as the Blackberry for instance, where businesslike functionality is a reliable priority?
As a for instance, I recently bought a HTC Hero phone and while this was a lot more expensive than our usual type of phone, bought from Tesco's for under a hundred quid, this new phone can't be used to send or receive MMS picture messages (it's a widely discussed problem). All the cheap phones we've previously owned have no trouble doing this by default when using a PAYG SIM.