The Best Music Smartphone Ever

We have expected an iPod killer to come from one of the big three mobile handset players (Nokia, Motorola or Sony-Ericsson). Or may be from the strong far-east challengers (Samsung, LG or Sanyo). But it looks like HTC has come from behind. Again. I've been a proud owner of the i-Mate SP5m for two days now, and must say it is an awesome device. It is not perfect (yet), but it is likely the best mobile phone on Earth at the moment. It has got all the goodies you can dream of (like WiFi, Bluetooth, EDGE, 1.3 megapixel camera...), managed by easy to navigate, elegant and fast Windows Mobile 5.0 and an absolutely gorgeous 240x320 portrait screen.
There are several pioneering design details.
WiFi. This is the first mobile phone I have had, to include WiFi along with some other connection options. SP5m has a dedicated Communications Manager button that lets you turn on and off selected transmitters (especially WiFi and Bluetooth). Windows OS takes care of intelligent least cost routing for data connections. If WiFi is present, all the traffic goes there, otherwise it tries to route via the PC you synchronize to (by means of Bluetooth or USB connection). In the end, when no "free" connections are present, it establishes GPRS/EDGE session to get your data. The real pity, there is no version of Skype (yet) for the Windows Mobile 5.0, as this would be absolutely awesome to have a Skype - enabled mobile handset. I hope it's coming.
240x320 screen. Screens of that size (or resolution to be prcise, that is 3 times the resolution of an original PalmPilot) are common in most of today's PDAs. But so far this amount of real estate was not present in a phone. The screen is simply gorgeous, with vibrant colours and razor sharp pixels.
Music. We all know Apple has to come with an iPhon sooner or later. But before it happens, SP5m is the winner in a convergence category. With dedicated media/music buttons and Windows Media 10 player (that is at least equally easy and powerful as iPods are), SP5m does great job in managing the gigabyte of memory and storage it can be equipped with (64MB on board and a 1GB mini-SD card). That is typically more than 300 songs and with 2GB and 4GB mini-SD cards on the horizon this will go up to a 1000 and more. And sound quality is excellent. The only drawback in the package are the factory supplied headphones (I strongly recommend music fans here use the in-ear headphones from Sony or Shure).
Internet, Email, Outlook for calendars and contacts, and hundreds of applications on the market make this little wonder the most versatile gadget to carry. And the last thing I really love about HTC designs, is the univerasal USB port. First of all it is a standard mini-USB, so you can use any USB-to-miniUSB cable, second it synchronizes all the data (music included) with your PC and third, it charges the phone, so if you travel with a laptop, there is no need to carry another power brick along, a tiny self-winding USB cable will do.
So, great job, HTC. For the next version we want Qualcomm MSM6280 inside, for 3G/HSDPA with 3G-324M stack for mobile video telephony, 4 megapixel camera and more storage, some 100GB for music, photos and movies would do... And Skype (or better - Google Talk) preloaded :)