(For me, at least.)

I’ve been thinking about my next phone. Maybe it should be a smart one. I have time because my new phone date is in December. So, I’m watching the discussions on iPhones and Androids. But now maybe there’s another option: keep using little pocket phones and get a Nexus 7 Android tablet instead of a smart phone. Here’s my thinking.

My communications toolbox currently includes desktop, laptop, and cell phone. Not a smartphone, just a little phone that fits nicely in a small pocket.

My current phone has all the phone features of an iPhone or a Droid. You can talk to people and tell them they’re breaking up, then call them back when the call gets dropped. Your odds are better with a landline on the other end. But I don’t know of anybody using any mobile phone who has a better experience than that.

This is because the technology for adding abounding features to phones moved very fast. Nobody in the mobile phone business had much time to get the call quality working well before the phones became cameras, personal organizers, and computers. So they didn’t bother. In terms of talking, cell phones work just a little better than they did 10 years ago, right? … Can you &@$%+! hear me now?

The reality as I see it is that smartphones are great little computers. But they’re a little too big to be phones. They’re a little too small to be useful computers. And they are not superior for voice calls.

Using a smartphone makes your cellular bill go up. You have to pay for data. And right now, there’s a lot of chaos in the wind because cell companies are changing their pricing and forcing people into data plans they don’t want. The costs are going up, especially for single people like me. Check out a CNET article and short video here.

So I’ve been thinking, what I really want is a tablet, like an iPad, not a new phone. But the iPad is expensive (roughly $400 – $700, depending on version and options) and maybe it’s a little too big. I already have a full size 17” laptop. Maybe I want something smaller – in between the smartphone and the iPad. And less expensive.

There are other 7” and 10” tablets on the market and I’ll probably check out more before I make a choice. But Google’s Nexus 7 is, by all reports so far, an awesome little computer. Bigger than a smartphone, smaller than a tablet, about the size of a Kindle. At $200, it’s ⅓ the price of an iPad. It’s doesn’t require a data plan because it’s not a phone. It connects via WiFi. So why not have a Nexus 7 for mobile computing, and keep using the kind of phone I’ve got? It’s a win win solution, right?

Check out the Nexus 7 in this video.

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