I’ve been thinking about which phone to get next, and it’s a difficult choice. The main contenders are the iPhone 5 (which is almost certainly going to come out this summer) and the HTC Desire HD (which has already been out for a while). I’m going to be upgrading in August so I’m sure there will be other options available by that point anyway, but it never hurts to try and stay ahead of the game.

Instead of trying to work out which phone is the “coolest” or has the most advanced features I thought I’d go back to basics and consider what I actually want from a phone. Despite being a technology geek, I rarely use most of the functions on my current phone, and I hardly ever download apps. This might change in the future, but right now apps aren’t my biggest concern.

In fact, when I really thought about what I wanted from a mobile phone it was reliability, long battery life and quick internet browsing. A QWERTY keyboard would be a nice bonus but not essential, as I don’t send that many emails when not at home.

For these reasons I’m swinging away from the high tech smart phones. Not only could I save a lot of money by buying a less advanced phone, but it would probably increase the battery life and wouldn’t really affect what I wanted to use the phone for.

If any of my readers have suggestions for phones that match these requirements then I’d be very interested to hear about them. I’ll keep you updated with what I find in my research too.