Currently there are a lot of smartphones on the market which all have their pros and cons. Since i’m searching for a follow-up device to my current XDA Orbit2 for many months now, i think it’s time to make a little round-up of what i found out so far.

Starting with windows mobile, i have to say that one of the biggest assets of the wm platform is still the customization and the huge app market. If you take the time, you can basically change the UI of your device at will. Hundreds of today plugins will help gathering all your important informations on the today screen. And even more applications are available ranging from pim apps to productivity tools. In the business user market there are only two serious contenders up to now: windows mobile and blackberry. Apples iphone doesn’t even have a real today screen with the current agenda on a glance, which is a very important criteria for any business user.

Also since the platform has been on the market for many years now, there is a really active online community. Just take a look over at xda developers, there is basically no problem which can’t be solved by the devs.

While everybody is talking about the new open android devices, they tend to forget that windows mobile is also a very open platform. Everybody can develop applications for wm devices, and the user is free to install whatever he wants. This is in my opinion a huge advantage over the iphone, where apple dictates the carrier, itunes usage and only apple verified apps can be installed (without using jailbreak). When using a windows mobile device there is no need for jailbreaks, because microsoft is giving full control to the user.

I think windows mobile offers currently the best mix of hardware power and application variety for anybody who wants a smartphone for business usage first and multimedia second.

Coming up next: Pros&cons of the iphone platform