Blackberries are for eating...

You know, sometimes we just get things into our heads that won't budge. RIM certainly appear to be targetting the more commercial market sector with their BlackBerry Storm - the photos on it's Storm web pages suggest a more chilled out type of phone - images of people playing guitars and so on, but I just can't think of a BB as anything other than an enterprise/business device - and bar the Pearl and Curve a fat one at that.

I know it's wrong. I haven't even held one or seen one up close for months (sort of tells you the sort of people I don't hang around with) even though they're issued to some people in my organisation, but if I was looking for a personal phone I'm pretty sure a BB wouldn't even come into the reckoning because of my perceptions about what sort of device it is. It's very ironic too because most people think my Centro is a BB.

So what does come into my reckoning?

Well, like Murray over at Palm -Mac, one of my regular reads and someone who I think has a very perceptive view of these things, I have come to the conclusion that I don't need an all singing, all dancing device. I certainly don't need Exchange compatibility. I prefer a front mounted keyboard, not because I want people to think I've got a BB, but because I've genuinely found the Treo 650, Treo 680 and Centro by far the most "usable" phones I've ever had.

I don't generally play music or watch videos on my dveice, though have both loaded "just in case".

I don't browse a lot, but that's because 1) the default Palm browser is crap, and 2) the Centro doesn't have wifi - GPRS is OK for RSS feeds, but you don't want to browse graphic intensive sites with a crap browser over GPRS.

Murray recently siad he wants email, a list app, Docs to Go and not much more, and actually, though I've got loads of apps stored on my Centro, that's about all I use too.

So what takes my fancy?

• iPhone, but I can't get a decent (comparable) tariff to my current T-Mob contract
• Google G1...maybe. Form factor is not my cup of tea
• Nokias? Not keen on their smartphone design and not generally a fan of Symbian
• BB...no (see above)
• Sony Xperia - not at that price!
• and so on....

Guess I'll be hanging on to the Centro for a while....it does the job