When choosing a smartphone or PDA platform, it's less about what other people say and more of what you really need.

As I've mentioned in my post on the Philippine Treo 680 launch, I work for a local distributor of gadgets. Two brands we supply and market are Palm and iPAQ, HP's line of windows mobile PDA phones. So I've had plenty of opportunities to try out both platforms.

I've realized that there's no one perfect mobile OS. Treo users will admit that the continuing lack of Wi-Fi is a huge letdown, while Windows Mobile enthusiasts have learned to live with crashes and slowdowns. So why are some people passionate about their choices? Because aside from making a significant investment on their device, they see the advantages of their selection:

The Palm OS is all about simplicity. Our product manager loves telling audiences that one of Palm's founders is into neuroscience. So when he designed the Palm OS, he had an innate understanding of human behavior and how the brain works. Thus knowing how to make things easier for users. That's why Palm users praise their OS for its generally user-friendly and responsive interface, even if there are some limitations in terms of features and extensibility.

Windows Mobile is all about power. There are very few entry-level Windows Mobile gadgets out there, because most of them boast a deep feature set. Many popular units boast Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, and IR, while the HTC TyTN even features HSDPA. Sure, cramming all these functions into one device makes life hard for the hardware (pun intended), but an all-in-one device will always appeal to power users.

If you think what I've written here is bunk, consider Symbian, Mobile Linux, or even go proprietary. The point is that you should take a serious look at how you'll a smartphone or PDA, and simply choose the tool that's perfect for your needs.