As most of you know, my Mizuiro is perhaps on her dying days (I just bought a new battery for her and it seems to be working well so far) and that has led me to seeking a replacement for her (bro already has dibs on her when I do replace the poor gal). For those following my tweets, I was previously considering a Blackberry and possibly a HTC (not going for Samsung nor Motorola due to bad family experiences). HTC because it had Android and BB because well, they’re really nice phones (I played with Ezel’s phone and liked the feel and camera).

At one point in time, I was even considering the new Microsoft WP7 phone, in particular the Mozart, until I realised two very important things:

There was no capability to drag and drop aka treat your phone like a USB thumbdrive with WP7 phones. You need to use Microsoft Zune to sync your phone (this sounds very familiar, doesn’t it?).

Also, there is no option to customise your ringtone. This made me flip tables. I love my ringtones, and say what you will, this is a deal breaker for me. No customised ringtones? Not even going to look at it.

Someone on my twitter list said it to Marauderz: Congrats, you bought a first generation iPhone!

Blegh. So there went all thoughts of WP7 until they get that fixed. However, it seems that even the BB doesn’t allow you to turn your phone into an extra thumbdrive, so I threw that one out the Window too. I like having that drag and drop functionality, and it’s another deal breaker for me.

So that left me with only Android. I had a healthy scepticism of Nokia phones; I didn’t see any of the phones being used by ex-colleagues and friends (like the E97 and gang) as the kind of phone that made me go “OMG WANTS!” While yes, I would like the ability to Twitter, email and possibly Facebook while on my phone, the lack of a really decent camera (or at least one like my current SE K810i) made me ignore any phones from Nokia.

That was, until Ganaesh, the evil person, introduced me to the Nokia N8.

It hit two of the deal breaker points I had with the other phones. A camera with zoom that made me go squee! and drag n drop functionality? Yes please!

But I did mention two OF the deal breakers I had. The third?

A physical QWERTY keyboard.

This is why I was dithering so much about getting a new phone. There aren’t as many phones on the market these days as a few years ago with keyboards. While many people enjoy it, I don’t. When I type or interact with my phone, I want to feel that it has an actual physical action associated with it. This makes working with my phone intuitive, so I spend less time learning what more phone can do and more on actually using the phone to get my message across.

So right now, it is between the Nokia N8 and the HTC Desire Z. One has a QWERTY but urgh, it’s camera isn’t really anything to shout about. The other has a killer camera, zoom and overall really nice features I would love to use but no QWERTY.

Why can’t Nokia be like Sony Ericsson and release a version called “Pro” with a keyboard? XD