What would your ideal device be?

Yesterday I posted some pictures of the Infobar phone that’s going to be released in Japan. I then got a little cross about the various manufacturers and their lack of adventure in designing phones for the European market. Well that article and something that happened at home got me thinking again.

I was trying to find a charger at home and I came across two blocks of metal. I won’t spoil the surprise in telling you exactly what they were. But these large lumps of metal are what made ask myself “what would my ideal device be?

How big would it be? How much memory would it have? Would it have a card slot? GPS? Stylus? Keyboard? Dual sim? Camera? Lots of different things to choose from. After a lot of deliberation I came up with the following list of requirements for my magical device.

Screen – about 5” high resolution 1280×720 like the Samsung Galaxy Note. It would make web browsing great and negate the need for a seperate tablet.
Memory – it would need at least 16gb storage with an app storage space of at least 2gb and a microSD slot. I could carry lots of music, films and documents with me then.
GPS – yes it would definitely need gps, I could replace my TomTom with it then. Using the 3g to get live traffic updates.
Stylus – after seeing the Samsung s pen and using the HTC Scribe pen I can certainly see a use for them. So yes I think it would need a clever stylus.
Keyboard – a while ago I had a Desire z. I loved it, having the ability to use a proper qwerty keyboard was great. It just added a load of extra bulk I wasn’t too keen on. Needless to say I sold it and got something thinner. I like the idea of the keyboard dock for the Asus Transformer. Having a removable keyboard would be ideal.
Dual sim – this is something that would be great. Using a work sim for voice and a personal sim for data. Only Viewsonic seem to think this is a good idea.
Camera – two cameras. One rear camera, decent quality, fast shutter speed, decent flash and a front facing camera for video calls.
What else would my ideal device have? Gorilla glass, a healthy range of accessories, maybe HDMI out, full size usb slot, Bluetooth, infra red, wifi b/g/n, some hardware buttons on the device as well such as a d-pad. The list could really go on.

Well guess what I found?

[slideshow]

These devices are my T-Mobile Ameo 8gb and my O2 XDA Flint 16gb. The only thing that these two lack is a decent os and a modern cpu. They have pretty much everything else on the list. Be it slightly slower older versions. The main thing that stops me using them today is Windows Mobile 5 and 6 is what they run. After years of using Android I expect too much. I still use the XDA Flint as my main sat nav with the TomTom software though.

So to answer my original question about my ideal device. It would look a lot like these two. Basically a cross between the Samsung Galaxy Note, the Asus Transformer and have some of the Xperia Play buttons drafted on as well. I guess a bluetooth keyboard and a Note would suffice, but hey why should I compromise. I reckon I’m not on my own here in my requirements. I remember the Ameo forum at XDA developers used to be quite a busy place. What are those users using today? Surely my magical device would be of interest to them.

Where are the new versions of these once great devices? Like the two shown here or the Universal or the HTC Shift laptop. An updated version of that would sell like hotcakes.

What devices would you stick together then? Let us know?