I’ve been using a smart phone for a while now and I don’t think they are all that smart anymore.They are not keeping up with where I think they should be.  I need my phone to get smarter.  Maybe in my case that means I want my phone manufacturer to get smarter or maybe it’s my service provider that needs to get smarter.  Now that I think of it, it could be a 3rd party company that could solve this issue.

I have been switching  between handsets a great deal in the last month.  I recently had to format one of my phones and needed everything on it.  When I say “everything” I’m referring to data not settings.  To be specific I really wanted to be able to easily have my contacts, calendar, bookmarks, and landmarks loaded onto my phone.  Now don’t tell me that there’s a switch application on Nokia smart phones (S60), I know it’s there.  I don’t want to have to use it.  I want there to be an app that does it for me so if I only have one phone with me and I have to format my handset I can easily get my essential info.  There are already great services like Switch that Nokia builds into their handsets that does this but I want something that is stand alone I can use if I only have one phone, not doing a swap or upgrade.  Now there’s Ovi a Nokia program which I find to be ok for some but not for me (I feel it’s only consumer grade) and it only handles calendar and contacts.  There’s Emoze (a client) that serves up your email on your handset and additionally syncs your calendar and contact, which is very similar to Blackberry and Mail for Exchange.  Problem is none of these fine apps will load my bookmarks and landmarks.  In recent years mobile web surfing has become quite popular and a necessity in some peoples lives (mine included).  Landmarks are saved geographical locations that the built in GPS and mapping applications on my phones use to give me directions.  I along with many people are reliant on these 2 forgotten aspects of mobile use.

I have been known to leave my office not having a print out or written address of where I have to go.  I just get in my email or on the web and pull up the address of where I’m going.  I then put it in my phone and just use built in or downloaded map applications to give me directions.

If you swap phones, or lose one and replace it, how am I supposed to get my bookmarks and landmarks on my new phone?  I’m stuck using the very useful and handy switch application but I shouldn’t have to.  I believe the mobile manufacturer, mobile service provider, or maybe some third party app will have to step in.  In my case between my service provider AT&T or Nokia I prefer Nokia.  They already have a service to sync your calendar and contacts called Ovi Sync so how much harder can it be to use the standards they already use in their handsets and create a way to push the bookmarks and landmarks down to my handset.

Ovi Sync seems like the perfect opportunity/outlet to do something like this.  It already has the ability to log into my handset and  can pull and push info up and down to my phone.  I hope we see something like this soon, Ovi has been upgraded and maybe Nokia just has to flip a switch.  We’ll just have to wait and see but until then I just don’t think my Smart Phone is smart enough.