Ideal would be hp16 size, with math functions, statistic functions, with "engineering" and "scientific notation", ability to be programmed to do simple things (like repeating the evaluation of a simple formula with other parameters), SD card for storage, and dot matrix color display for plotting. I would even go with a mini-clamshell like a slightly shrink down HP200 with color display and the aforementioned goodies. Imagine HP16C in clam-shell configuration, that would be about right.
HP 15C is pretty close to what you're describing. At least until you started talking about SD cards, dot matrix color displays, etc. It is the same basic hardware as the 16C, but oriented toward scientific applications. A very nice machine, though my own usage patterns favored the 16C.
My bias toward the HP 16C comes partly from the days when I did a lot of FORTRAN programming on an old IBM mainframe, with the ugly UI of that generation of computers. When things would crash, I'd have a printout of a core dump to go through, with hex addresses and hex representations of data. It might take a few hours or more to get another run in, so it was worth extracting as much useful info from the core dump as possible, rather than just guessing at what the problem might be, running it again, and seeing what happened (kids these days don't know how good they've got it with modern interactive symbolic debuggers). In addition to the great bit-twiddling built-in to the HP 16C, I used the great programmability of it to write a routine that would convert IBM floating point numbers back and forth between IBM's peculiar floating point and hex, so I could type in a hex number from the dump and immediately see what floating point number it represented. That was tremendously useful at the time. Today, I'd do the job on the computer, but back then, the calculator was much more readily available than the computer. Times have changed.
It brings up another point, back to the SD cards, dot matrix color displays, etc. To me, a requirement for a
calculator is that it should have multi-year battery life, very readable display in all lighting conditions, a keyboard that gives good tactile feedback, and instant on with no noticeable "boot time". Other than that, it should be simple, and it shouldn't have features that cause compromises on those points. These days especially, if you really need computing horsepower, big graphical displays, or need to massage large amounts of data, the calculator probably isn't the right tool. We have laptops, desktops, internet-connected smartphones, tablets, etc. But a simple uncluttered well-designed calculator is still the easiest way to do certain simple short tasks.
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