Choosing a new cellphone

For the past two years, I have been a moderately satisfied user of the Nokia 6230 cellphone, which does all a cellphone should do (“it even has a camera!”). However, it suffers from some shortcomings, namely:

While it’s surely possible to connect a laptop to the Internet via bluetooth to the phone, then GSM, UMTS, or GPRS to the provider, it’s not possible to do it the other way, phone via bluetooth to laptop, then Ethernet. This is annoying for two reasons: one, I have to pay expensive GPRS charges even if I am downloading something to the phone in the office, and two, I cannot use my SyncML server, because the perimeter firewall blocks access to its port from the outside. See these threads: A B C.
When connected to the headset, the phone cannot establish other bluetooth connections. So while it’s possible for me to dial numbers from the laptop or my Palm (quite convenient), I cannot do that for calls using the headset. I’d really like to be able to stow my cellphone in the bag, and do communications with the Palm (which can also read and send SMS via the phone) and the headset only. Right now, I might have to search for the number on the Palm, dial it by hand, then stash the phone away to complete the call via headset.
I store all my contacts on the phone memory, not on the SIM card, for two reasons: the SIM card memory can only store one number per name, and I really don’t want separate records for “John Home”, “John Office”, and “John Cell”, and two, I often switch SIM cards when travelling to other countries. But switching the SIM card will always configure the phone to use phone and SIM memory for the addressbook, so I always have to change that back.
Even though the phone comes with timezone support, I have to press at least 10 keys to change the timezone.
The phone has five caller groups, to which you can assign separate ringing tones. I often wanted to be able to set ring tones per person instead.

Now, my provider is offering me a new phone if I choose to renew the contract (which I will). Thus, I am faced with a new choice, and so ventured out to the stores to get myself informed. I have somewhat of a preference for Nokia phones simply because I already have a set of chargers for them. My requirements for a phone are:

It has to be small, light, and sturdy.
It has to have bluetooth, ideally without the aforementioned shortcomings.
It has to have a long battery life, standby time of at least a week.
It should interface (via bluetooth) with the Palm Tungsten T5 as well as Linux (Gammu, or something else).
It has to have quick and intuitive navigation (this pretty much rules out Sony Ericsson, where it can be a second between keypress and display update, or so I’ve seen).
It has to have voice-activated dialing, but instead of pressing a key, speaking the name, then having the phone dial, I would like to press a key, speak the name, confirm the call within a set amount of time, and only then have the phone call. Alternatively, I’d accept if I had to keep a button pressed while speaking the name. Also, the phone should acknowledge failure to determine a name rather than choosing the closest one; it happened too many times that the key would be accidentally pressed while the phone was in my pocket, followed by the phone’s “smart” decision to call some random person in my address book after listening to the background noise or the rustling of my pocket.

My most-wanted feature has always been a button you can press, which would make the phone ring 10 seconds later — a great way to get out of an annoying conversation. Unfortunately, no manufacturer even bothered to reply to my feature request sent maybe 4 years ago, so it’s unlikely I’ll find a phone with this capability anytime soon.

Another nice feature to have would be an in-phone answering machine, like the Sony CMD-Z5 used to have. Of course, the provider lobby is not going to let that happen, as they’d lose revenue not being able to charge people normal connection charges for calls to their own mailbox.

What I don’t need (but would not care about anyway) are:

Camera, video camera
MP3 player, other multimedia support
MMS support
Games, Java, other applications

Given all of the above, it seems that I only have one phone to choose: The Nokia 6230i, where the i stands for “improved”, I guess. But before you get your hops up high (as I did mine), check out the list of improvements and join me in a big sigh. While every manufacturer, including Nokia, has released several new phones over the last two years, they have all been down their multimedia lines. In fact, it seems that the only improvements Nokia and the other manufacturers performed on their business lines was to make the phones larger, add keyboards, and turn them more into PDAs. How sad.

Then again, a lot of new models are announced. I may well have to put off the decision until the 6233 is out, the 6021 available here, or I’ve had a chance to check out the 6822. Also, the E60 and E70 look like worth a look, especially because they integrate Voice-over-IP.

And I feel I should have another look at Motorola, Samsung, and Siemens phones. However, so far I have not heard too many good things about any of these, and haven’t seen models that are small and light. I really don’t need to slide or fold the phone to use it.

PS: if you are a phone manufacturer and read this, maybe you could again consider normal user needs when designing your next line of phones, rather than trying to forcefully push more multimedia upon our entertainment society, which nobody really needs but everyone ends up using.