Here are a few things to think about when shopping for a new mobile phone - hopefully some of the mobile phone manufacturers might even take this to heart...

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I want a phone that gets good reception, has a long battery life, is sturdy, and easy to use.

And my "preference" is the clamshell style that folds, and protects the keys.
There are some that have a sliding faceplate that covers the keys (like the LG Rhythm) that might be ok ... I haven't decided on that yet.

If it has a camera, that could be handy.
If it plays mp3 files, that would be ok too ... but I probably wouldn't use that much, since it would run down the battery.
Also, I would want these 2 extra features to *not* make the phone part more complicated (ie, they should have their own dedicated buttons).


But Nooooo ... the phone companies seem to spend all their R&D money adding gimmicky features, which "kids" (young and old) go ga-ga over (and don't realize they're paying over $100 extra per month to use).  I don't want to send text messages, read email, view my calendar, balance my checkbook, calculate restaurant tip, find my GPS location, watch a movie, play games, download ringtone mini-songs, download mp3 music, etc, etc, etc on my phone.  But this is what the phone companies focus on, because that's where the extra money is, and they get killed in the ratings if their phones don't have all the latest/greatest features...

And to compound the problem, when they add all these gimmicky features, it makes the regular phone features harder to find & use.  Also, with all these features, there is more opportunity for things to go wrong with the phone (all that extra cr*p actually makes the phone into a small computer - and you know how computers lock up & crash, etc).  It is evident from the reviews that many of these new phones do a crappy job of being a phone - many get terrible (or marginal) reception, and many of them have all kinds of "odd" problems (no doubt, many of them brought on by all these fancy gimmicky applications trying to co-exist on the phone).  And some of these blackberry-style phones are so big, they cover the whole side of your face when you're trying to talk on them - a p*ss-poor job of being a phone, imho!