My mobile phone was getting a little long in the tooth, so I’ve been researching phones for a few months. As tempting as the iPhone is, I didn’t want to switch to AT&T. A couple of weeks ago I took the plunge and bought the HTC Mogul instead.

Here are the highlights that made the Mogul a perfect package:

• Slide-out full keyboard. I’m ham-fisted when it comes to tiny buttons, so having more keyboard real-estate than a Blackberry is a big win with me.
• Touch screen. You can use fingers or a stylus, the latter of which tucks into the phone shell. When you’re using IE or the Google Maps, the touch-screen functionality is indispensable. The on-screen dialing has nice big fat virtual buttons if you don’t want to use the stylus.
• Scroll-wheel. The wheel on the side is right where your index finger or thumb holds the phone, depending on which hand has the phone. If you use your mouse scroll wheel on your PC, you’ll instantly know why this is such a great little feature. It makes scrolling window panes or ripping through contact lists simply effortless.
• Wifi. If you have wifi at home, work, or lunch, you can get a pretty good connection and completely bypass your wireless plan’s data transfer restrictions.
• Windows Mobile 6. Since the Mogul has a touch screen, you get the full WM6 functionality rather than the rather disappointing “smart phone” variant.
  • With Microsoft Office mobile, Internet Explorer, and Outlook, you are carrying around a portable PC. I’m no Microsoft fanboy, but they sure come in handy.
  • Outlook Express Mobile makes it really easy to tap into my Gmail account with full IMAP support.
  • WM6 also gives you lots of flexibility when it comes to skinning the UI, ringtones, etc. Since you can turn any audio file into a ringtone, gone are the days of paying to download them from your service provider.
• Easy software development. WM6 has free emulators and .NET SDK support. This is a much nicer development platform than many phones give you.
• Oh, yeah, it’s also a phone! The sound quality is solid and it supports stereo bluetooth headsets.

The Mogul runs on the Alltel, Qwest and Sprint networks, and a friend tells me that Verizon will be offering it next month as well.

If you’re looking for a new phone and the iPhone isn’t a good fit for you, I highly recommend this one.