Mobile Handsets: What do the experts use?
The big guns in the mobile space generally have free access to most phones on the market, and with the freedom to pick and choose they are the prime candidates to help establish which phones are hot and which ones are not.
Different people obviously have different needs in a mobile phone – think Paris Hilton versus Bill Gates – and the focus in this article is more towards the business market than the social scene. We wanted functionality over good looks, although it doesn’t hurt to have a device with the wow factor.
Who uses what?
Vodacom’s COO, Pieter Uys, has 2 phones, using Vodacom Twin Call facility. He has a Nokia E61 for business purposes –lots of email and SMSs – and has recently started to use his ‘brand new Nokia N95 for after hours and weekends’.
Uys enjoys the multitude of tools offered by Nokia’s N95, which include a 5 M pixel camera with Carl Zeiss lens, Vodafone Live!, video camera and an MP3 player.
MTN’s Data Manager, Brian Seligmann, likes to use a variety of phones, including a Sony Ericsson P990i, Sony Ericsson W880i, HTC 7500, HTC P3300, Samsung x820, Samsung i600 Blackjack, Nokia N95, Nokia N75 and a BlackBerry 8100 Pearl. Seligmann’s primary phone is currently a BlackBerry 8800, which with all of the other phones at his disposal may say something about his choice.
CellC Product Specialist Gareth Fry uses a Sony Ericsson W800i as a ‘day to day’ phone. Fry says that his choice is based on the phone’s form factor (small enough to fit in the pocket), its high end specifications (especially the Bluetooth remote control functionality and the 1GB of storage) and its versatility. When on the road Fry opts for his HP IPAQ HW6915 “so that my email can follow me around”.
Virgin Mobile’s CEO, Peter Boyd, says he is in a fortunate position and tends to use most high end handsets. While Boyd does not seem to have any real preference, he said that if there was an environmentally friendly phone, he would certainly be using it.
Jannie van Zyl, technical guru at Vodacom and a general technology expert, has latched on to the HTC TyTn PDA. “The TyTn is the best converged phone I’ve found so far with a full qwerty keyboard allowing me access to all my mail and SMS’s (hundreds per day) and MyADSL while still having a form factor that’s ‘pocketable’,” Van Zyl points out.
Nashua Mobile’s Steve Smith opted for the HP 6915, which he says gives him “all the cell phone features as well as push e-mail from my corporate exchange server and GPS.”
What they want
It’s interesting to see what the experts in the mobile field are using, but what is even more telling is their wish list.
MTN’s Seligmann says that he is happy with what he has now, but looking at future offerings he finds the Apple iPhone appealing. He however points out that while the user interface looks very interesting he doubts that he will be happy with other aspects of it’s technology – specifically EDGE instead of HSDPA.
Van Zyl and Smith shares Seligmann’s interest in the iPhone, mainly for its good looks and social appeal. Aesthetic appeal and the cool factor however only go so far, and both Smith and Van Zyl also gave other alternatives.
“The iPhone will become the de-facto ‘must-have’ status symbol, so I’ll be in line for one as well. But if you want the best phone for your money today, few handsets will beat the Nokia N95,” Van Zyl pointed out.
“I would love the iPhone as I am from Sandton, but I would settle for the HTC Advantage X7501, I have played with a demo and yes, it’s large but in the Tech world, size does count,” said Smith.
Cell C’s Fry says that he is eyeing two phones. The first is the HTC S710 VOX and the second the Sony Ericsson W950i. “These devices are very different but their size, the office functionality offered by Windows Mobile 6 on the HTC and the wow factor of the Sony Ericsson are what attract me,” Fry said.
The last words
Handset providers have to keep up a grueling routine to ensure that they keep afloat in this dynamic and fast moving industry, and the drive for better and faster mobile devices has no end in sight. Expectations are high and Vodacom’s Pieter Uys succinctly sums up what many people may be looking for in a mobile device.
“Waiting for a Windows device that does not reboot too often, battery that lasts more than a day, Gigabytes of memory, the ability to control my TV, open the garage door, and remotely operate my PC.”
Let’s hope this phone comes in both trendy blue and a glossy black finish :-)
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