All quiet on the smartphone front

RIM announced another Curve, HTC announced another Android phone (but with a dongle), Samsung launched another Galaxy S, and we will soon be blown away by the awesome phones coming out with Windows Phone Mango. Sound familiar? That's pretty much what we've been hearing for months and months. Maybe it's just me but it seems the smartphone space has gotten awfully boring of late.

Smartphones are still flying off the shelves, and adoption of them is still strong in the consumer space. It's just the phones themselves that are boring. Google is activating tons of Android phones every day, but frankly they are all pretty much the same. Same processors, same basic form, same cameras... well, you get the picture.

We keep hearing about the great Windows Phone handsets that are sure to come our way, especially given Microsoft's partnership with Nokia, but those are Real Soon Now. Mango looks to be the version of Windows Phone that will give Android a run for its money, but that's also Real Soon Now.

It seems the only buzz these days about Android is around the promise of Ice Cream Sandwich. Instead of buzzing about Android phones, all the talk is about how the next version of Android is going to be awesome. Real Soon Now.

Of course there is the standard iPhone rumor mill, which Apple is careful to keep just rumors. Even those rumors seem tame lately, with nothing surprising about the gadget that is coming Real Soon Now.

RIM is basically rolling over to die, having put all of its eggs in the QNX basket that will be appearing on phones Real Soon Now. Its problem is the QNX platform has tanked in the market on the PlayBook, so it killed its Next Big Thing itself.

What can shake up the quiet, boring smartphone space? How about HTC buying webOS from HP and going all in on its own platform? HP/Palm couldn't entice buyers with webOS phones but I'll bet HTC could do it. Quality phones with nice features packing the webOS interface would be competitive, and shake up the boring smartphone space. HTC could rebrand webOS, I'm thinking Sense would fit.

Image credit: Flickr user renaissancechambara