So after much deliberation, I’ve decided I won’t be getting a smart phone after all.  Instead, I’m going to get an iPad. Here’s why:

1) I don’t feel there’s enough missing in my life that a smart phone can do.

Yeah, I want to be one of the cool kids and have a new gadget to show off too, but in the end, after playing around with a few friend’s iphones, I just couldn’t justify it.  I didn’t feel like there were any “killer apps” that would change my life if I had it.

2) The Price

By my calculations, it was going to cost me about $800-$1,200 over the next year to have a smart phone.  Meanwhile, the iPad with 3G for a year would come in at the bottom of that, $800.  And the second year, when I’m not considering the cost of the item in it, it has a significant cost advantage at just $15 for data.

3) The iPad did have the killer apps

After about 15 minutes with the oneforty company iPad, I realized I wanted one.  It has this strange magic ability to fill a gap I didn’t know I had in my life; now I can’t wait to run through a bunch of saved blog posts on instapaper and it feels so much less intrusive to have an iPad in my living room while watching TV with roommates than it did having a full fledged laptop burning my lap.  The giant color screen is also really powerful for displaying everything from websites to simple one to one presentations.

4) The iPad is just an iPhone with a bigger screen

So evaluating things overall, and I see that the iPad can do any of those magical things that the iPhone can do, but with a much bigger screen. I personally cannot imagine using a 3.5 inch screen to read emails or blog posts, so I’m happy to have the advantages of the big screen and none of the stress of needed it to fail at making phone calls.

5) Dumb Phones are still the world’s majority

Want to make a killer app to serve the world? It’s going to be on dumb phones.  Smart phone proliferation is a luxury of the wealthy.  There are billions of people just getting any cellular technology and that will only be on “dumb phones” for some time.  As an entrepreneur, I think you’re at your best when you’re one of your own customers.  Therefore, to keep in mind some of the biggest opportunities, I’m keeping my dumb phone.  I couldn’t find any current statistics I found satisfying to put here, but if I find one that shows the cell phone breakdown of the world, I’ll definitely add it later.

So I doubt there are too many people that are going to be rolling with a LG VX8300 and an iPad, but hey…who doesn’t want to be a trendsetter?