I've seen the future ... and it's a bit pants

The future's bright, unless you put your mobile phone contract with someone who will pass your personal details to every third party mobile phone upgrader under the sun.

Gotta be fair to H3G though, they haven't done that unlike my last mobile phone provider. Ok, I kinda started in the middle of a post there :-)

I have a new mobile phone ... It's brand spanking new modern technology. However, this isn't a "best thing since sliced bread" post ... No, far from it. Gadgets have their place but I reckon the people who make them are forgetting the basic requirements as they hunt to pack in more and more functionality.

What's a phone for ? It's to make calls and send & receive text messages. It must have enough battery life to give you a decent chance to be away from the charger. Anything else is just fluff. Internet is nice, gps is ok, especially when you're somewhere strange and are looking to get around. Satnav capability is creditable but to be honest, I don't think a little screen will beat my old iPaq based combo. Although the iPaq is car bound. Touchscreens are a gucci change for cleaning up the look of phones but after struggling to enter my wifi password, I'm not convinced.

What's the cost of all these new fangled features engineered to enrage the Luddite Tendency ? Let's list them :

Battery life. First and most important feature. I used to think my last phone was a bit poor because at about 3 days, it didn't have nearly as much the one before which lasted for over a week between charges. This one has a battery life of 36 hours ... And that's with all the bells and whistles turned off.

That's not good. Bonus functionality should not get in the way of core functionality. If I was away from power for a weekend, this phone would die halfway through the weekend unless I went for severe power management (turning off when not in use).

Troubles with data connection. I can't get a 3g signal through ... and that's at work as well as at home. I'll have to see what it's like at the Mall when I have a whinge at the 3 shop. I can get data to it through my wifi network but that's only useful at home.

More on the touchpad. I have to admit, after struggling heavily on Friday I've found it much easier to put those tricky passwords in. (I apply Kung Fu to my passwords now ... and it is strong) Still, I think I'll end up missing real buttons.

Where was I ? Hmm, mid rant until I thought I'd found a fix for that internet trouble ... Which seems to have worked and then failed again. Ho Hum. The internet issue is patchy, we'll see what they say in the shop.

The battery issue is likely to be the real killer, if I switch back to my old phone it'll be because I don't want to put the phone on charge every night. That's looking like a "when I switch back" to be honest ... It was a bit clunky compared to the previous Nokia but it wasn't too shabby. It would have been a much tougher choice if the upgrade hadn't been free :-)

PS It's not all bad. This new Android phone comes with an applet called TrackID. It'll listen to about 5 seconds of music and then try and identify it. I haven't caught it out yet, despite trying a few things. Must look for something particularly obscure in my iTunes collection ...