I’ve hummed and hah-ed over getting a smartphone for nearly 5 years now. I’ve made do with pay-as-you-go basic phones, and they’ve served me well. As mobile phones. I’ve also been willing, in that time, to lug my laptop around on the off-chance that I’ll find wi-fi at my destination.

No longer. I’d like to shrink my phone, music player and surfing capabilities into one package. Preferably a robust one that works whether there is free wi-fi or not. I thought I had done well to narrow choices to my three favourite brands: Palm, Apple and Nokia.

My very early Palm PDA was a joy to use in its youth, and I’ve always admired the simplicity of its OS. Apple gets on the list for the very simple reason that I use a Powerbook as my main computer, and would hence benefit from easy porting of music and other crap to and from the iPhone. Nokia is, for me, a no-brainer where mobile phones are concerned; I bought the early banana phone and graduated to various very basic Nokias (and one fairly fancy hand-me-down from my mother). Again, the familiarity of navigation is greatly in its favour.

Well and good, you’d think. Not so! I now find myself dithering even more. Do I like the low(ish) prices of the Palm Treo (or the even cheaper Centro) enough to sacrifice screen size and sexiness? Or am I so pro-Apple that I can overlook the lack of 3G capabilities in the current iPhone (let alone be prepared to buy the model that is bound to be superseded by Christmas)? Or do I want to bankrupt myself and get the sexiest Nokia N95 8GB?

My cheapness nags me to get the cheapest (that’d be the Palm Centro then). My shallow nature informs me that the N95 will up my cool factor (which is currently non-existent) and worth every one of its 750 unlocked dollars. My Apple-washed brain screams that the iPod/phone/browser-in-one is a no-brainer (especially since my old 3rd gen 15GB iPod AND my not-as-old 4GB iPod mini both died recently).

Then I remember why I stopped using my Palm: the sync station is unwieldy if you don’t have a dedicated computer desk (which is my current situation) and the battery life is somewhat ridiculously short. Did I already mention the $750 price tag of the Nokia N95? I should write it on a post-it and leave it on my screen as a reminder. And as for the more-than-three-in-one iPhone, BOTH my iPods died recently; there’s some mega flaw with the hard disk that is clearly incompatible with my lifestyle.

What to do, interwebs? I bleg you to save me from my dithering and give me some advice.

N.B. No one has prompted me to list these 3 brands as advertising. Who’d be silly enough to want to advertise here anyway? I just like them because their stuff kind of works for me. But I’m not adverse to any free phones… (Oh, if only I’d taken this offer up!) I have no scruples. And I save my ethics for science and the environment only.