Cell phones hurt my brain

But not in the radiation kind of way… in the omg-too-many-things-to-think-about kind of way.

I’m in the market for a new cell phone and provider. I’ve been on a Verizon family plan for the last 5 years, always with the free phone that comes with the plan. I’m switching to my own plan when the family contract is up. I’ve been pretty happy with the quality of calls on Verizon, and coverage seems to be great wherever I need it. But I’m definitely open to switching to another provider.

One of the hardest parts is figuring out how to start looking for a phone and plan. I think I’m going about this the wrong way. I have vague idea of what I want in a phone, but mostly I’ve just been reading lots and looking at lots of different options.

I’ve been hearing a lot of talk about Sprint’s SERO plan. For $50/month I can get 1250 minutes, and unlimited text and data. That’s hard to pass up. On the other hand, there are some features I want that none of the SERO phones seem to have.

It’s time to take a different approach to this, since I seem to continuously waste hours on end reading about phones. I’m going to use the MoSCoW Method to figuring out what cell phone I should get! The MoSCoW Method is used in software development to help prioritize features the client wants.

Must	Without this, the project is a failure
Should	Should have this if at all possible
Could	Could have this if it does not delay Shoulds or Musts
Won’t	Won’t have this in this version, but Would like in the future

While this method was not exactly intended for this, I am going to prioritize my wishlist of cell phone (and service plan) features into these categories. However, the “W” doesn’t really seem to apply here, so I’ll leave out that category.

Must	Should	Could
> 1000 Minutes Text messaging Must NOT have ONLY a touchscreen	Unlimited text messaging Picture messaging Google Maps Access to my Gmail account Unlimited data plan Bluetooth tethering for access to the series of tubes anywhere! QWERTY keyboard	Integration with Google Calendar, or at least iCal, either in the form of a calendar app on the phone, or web access to Google Calendar A real GPS receiver so that I could run something like the Google Map Cell Phone Tracker An Internet browser

Some things I’ve been reading:

• http://ask.metafilter.com/69244/Should-I-get-a-Treo
• SomethingAwful HTC Titan/Mogul thread

So far it looks like either the HTC Mogul or Palm Treo 755p are at the top of my list.