How many of you have heard of the Sectera Edge smartphone? It runs Windows Mobile, it's made by General Dynamics (the people behind the F-16 Falcon fighter) and it's about to get a whole lot of publicity. Why? Because the feature set is perfect for one smartphone user – Barack Obama. But what can the President of the United State's choice tell us about the mobile market?

To me, it shows that function is still vital. For all the people proclaiming that a device is the best thing since sliced bread, if it is missing one certain feature, it could be 100% useless to a user. From all reports, Obama's critical feature on his smartphone was push email and he made sure everyone knew about this – the mentions and indirect promotion of the Blackberry is estimated to be worth upwards of $25 million to Research in Motion.

Yet he can't use a Blackberry when he is President; partly for security reasons, and partly because the legislation that means all Presidential communications hasn't quite brought itself up to date in regards to email.

But if push email is Obama's concern, the security angle is the concern of the Secret Service – and hence the murmurings that a special “secure smartphone” will be issued to him that will provide him the former while ensuring the latter. You may make up your own line about how secure the Windows Mobile apps running on the device will be.

The General Dynamics Sectera Edge - Note "Secure" Display at bottom

The point is this. Out of all the smart phones on the market, the hype did not matter. The black and white nature of his requirements matched very few phones, and once that was clear a short-list was drawn up.

The key for many is to work out what their must-have feature list should be. While Obama has a legion of advisors and interested parties, the general public have commercials and advertising telling them what they need to have to be cool and fit in. If you can clear away that layer of marketing and sit down with what you need from your phone, then choosing your new handset is going to be a little bit clearer.

Do you really need to have an external storage card, or is it just something that would be nice? With over 60 applications on the new Nokia handsets, that's a lot of functionality, but there are areas where other handsets perform better. Much as we like to think that one handset can do everything, there are always areas that will be lacking.

Choosing the best phone for you is a matter of recognising and differentiating between your needs, your wants and the things that would just be nice to have. Get those clear in your mind, and you can start investigating your device choice with a clear mind. You may have to compromise in some areas, but at least you'll be able to negotiate the product lines with confidence.

-- Ewan Spence, Jan 2009.