My Ideal Smartphone in 2022
My ideal smartphone doesn't exist. It's never existed, really, although a couple of phones I have owned in the past have come pretty close.
Here are the features my ideal smartphone would have:
- BlackBerry physical keyboard or similar
- Removable battery
- Physical kill switches for cell service, WiFi, Bluetooth, camera, and mic
- 3.5mm audio jack
- An operating system that respects and protects user privacy
- Convergence: the ability to connect my phone to an external display, keyboard, and mouse, and drive a desktop-like experience
- The ability to easily install the operating system of my choice
All other considerations are flexible – size, shape, camera quality, etc.
The phones I have used in the past that have come closest to this ideal have been:
BlackBerry Q10. This was such a good phone. It packed so much in such a small, portable device. The BB10 operating system was an absolute joy to use and it had a brilliant physical keyboard. Removable battery and headphone jack of course. It also had a dedicated Micro HDMI port that allowed you to connect it to any external display. Using their BlackBerry Blend software, you could access and interact with messages, emails, photos, and files on your phone from a tablet or computer. I have used and enjoyed a dozen other BlackBerry devices, but I still consider the Q10 the best all-around smartphone I have ever used.
Microsoft Lumia 950. It ran Windows 10 Mobile, which was actually super slick for its time. Removable battery and headphone jack. Fantastic camera. But the thing I was really excited about was a feature of Windows 10 Mobile called Continuum. When docked with a display, keyboard, and mouse, Continuum was like you were using Windows 10. Apps optimized for Continuum looked and functioned pretty much like they did on a Windows PC. And they had remote desktop app which allowed you to log into other Windows PCs or virtual machines, and in that sense you basically had the full power of a PC in the palm of your hand.
Alas, both of these phones – and their entire hardware and software ecosystems – are now mere footnotes in technology history. Killed prematurely by the iOS and Android duopoly. And neither of them allowed you to install a different OS, of course. Otherwise I might still be using them in some capacity.
For now, I'm using an iPhone 8 and have no idea what I will switch to when Apple decides to stop supporting it with OS updates. I'm not thrilled about the available options. Like I said, my ideal smartphone doesn't exist.
#100DaysToOffload (No. 23) #tech