Need advice on buying a smartphone

[Hateshinai]

Brief intro. Being a doctor in Malta means that I get an amount (1250 euros) to spend on continuing my education every year. This usually means courses,books, computer hardware, internet bills, etc. This year I hardly spent any of it so I have 2 months left and 800 euros to spend. So I decided to buy a smartphone (PDAs are accepted as part of education). I frankly know nothing about them so I need advice on what to buy.

It must have:
1. GPS
2. a good camera.
3. expandable memory
4. good battery life
5. good audio/video performance
6. be available from www.expansys.com.mt
7. fit within my budget (as priced on that site)
8. decent audio/video
Running emus well would be great but is not neccessary.

Please advise me before my head explodes

[enderfall]

I've used my fair share of smartphones in my life and I can only recommend iphones and Blackberry's. Everything else is junk, although I have yet to try the new Palm Pre. That being said, iphones seem out of your price range, so your probably best off with a Blackberry. I have the storm and think it's great. The multimedia aspect is not quite on par with the iphone, but e-mail and calendar features etc are top notch in the smartphone market, IMHO. Good luck!

[Hateshinai]

I am now considering the HTC Touch Pro 2. Anyone got one?

[aaron]

i have the HTC G1, i would go with that if it's an android based phone. very cool options, lots of emus, great functionality. my phone works well with the gps and the camera functions like you said you wanted, i also can keep track of my ebay account, post/search on craigslist, run pandora radio, etc. it's very cool. there's a wonderful gba emulator also, if you've got a physical keyboard on that particular phone, or if it supports multi-touch (mine doesn't)

good luck!!

[Hateshinai]

But now I saw the HTC HD2 which will be out in a month and it looks amazing. Huge screen, 1 GHz CPU, multitouch, 5 megapixel camera with flash... And it's within my budget.
I think I'll wait for that.

[aaron]

i recommend android over iphone, at least in the US. can't say how that'd be over there but yeah, i like my g1.

[Pulsar_t]

There are dozens of forums which can provide more expert advice. However if I were to go for a smartphone (which is against my principles, I prefer 'em small and simple) I'd probably take a look at the Samsung Omnia 2.

[lordofduct]

What I find sad, is that all these phones are more powerful then my first, second, and third computers I ever owned.

For isntance my Tandy 1000, with its intel 80286 and 768K of RAM. Total win machine there yo!

Or my upgrade to a Hewlett Packard 70mhz intel x386 with a whopping 16 megs of RAM. SIXTEEN MEGS, yep, 16 megs. I could like... ummm... play Quarantine.



Just wait, another 15 years and I'll be carrying around a watch that is more powerful then my current machine: i7 intel chip 4-core clocked at 2.93 ghz with 12 gigs of RAM.

[pepharytheworm]

The Tandy 1000 was my first computer. Radioshack ruled during those days, at least electronic store wise.