Productivity Coaching: Recommended Phones for 2009
One of the most valuable time assets you can own is a great smartphone.
Why? This effective time investment principle: You should be able to carry your current 1) calendar 2) tasks and 3) contacts at all times. Today’s smartphones allow anyone to easily live by this principle. They effortlessly sync your calendar, tasks, and contacts, making your critical information extremely portable.
These telephones can carry complete information filing cabinets. You and I no longer need to lug around paper planners, full of post-it notes, business cards, and hopelessly out of date contact information. I have all my current contacts, many with photos, as well as all my appointments and tasks on my phone.
Perhaps once a week they will ask me the following question: “I am going to switch to a new mobile phone provider. What specific phone do you recommend?” For the benefit of anyone else with this question, I have compiled a current list of the top two phones that I would recommend from the top five US carriers.
Note 1: This list has a strong bias towards Windows smartphones. This is because years of one-on-one customer work have repeatedly shown that Windows-based phones use the most reliable system to sync information from your computer to your phone. For an explanation on my preference for smartphones, read my 2008 article: Which phone is the smartphone?
Note 2: I am not a reseller for any of these phones or providers. I don’t get any commission for recommending a particular phone brand.
Note 3: To my regret to my international readers, I understandably needed to focus this list on a particular geographic region, so I focused only on US carriers. The good news is that most international carriers have equivalent models available. .
Note 4: This list focuses only on the top four US carriers as of 2008 (in order of most subscribers): AT&T, Verizon, Sprint Nextel, and T-Mobile.
The following are the phones that I currently recommend to my clients to buy:
AT&T
High-end: HTC FUZE
Budget: LG INCITE
Verizon
High-end: HTC Touch PRO
Budget: Verizon Wireless XV6900
Sprint Nextel
High-end: HTC Touch PRO
Budget: MOTO Q 9c
T Mobile
Only option: T-Mobile Dash – Black
T-Mobile Note: Although T-Mobile service offers poor phone selection, a GSM phone from a different carrier can be unlocked to work on the T-Mobile network.