Time for a PDA Phone...

[Imakeholesinu]

So, Verizon has been telling me for the last month that I get a $50 phone credit this Saturday for a new phone since I'm enrolled in their "New Every 2" program. This is great so I've been shopping for a phone the last few weeks and decided on getting a smart phone since my company has a BES server and uses Lotus Domino for e-mail access. I was looking at a couple of the blackberries that Verizon offered and I wasn't that impressed with the Pearl or 8830 and I wasn't sure if the Curve would even make it out.

I started looking at their other smart phones. I've heard that palm's are absolutely abysmal and a friend of mine had one on Sprint and he hated the damn thing so I'm going to steer clear of that. Another friend of mine got a Motorola Qc from Sprint that has Windows Mobile 6 Pro on it. Very cool phone I have to say. Only problem is that he has the extended battery on it and goes through a charge each day. Unfortunately Verizon doesn't offer that model of the Q (yet).

So my options now from Verizon are pretty much either the LG VX6800 or the Samsung SCH-i760.

I've had two Samsung Phones, one with T-Mobile and one with Verzion. The T-moblie one, my dad still uses to this day and it is a rugged mother fucker. That phone has been in use since early 2002 and is still chugging along. My current phone is the Samsung SCH-a930. I love this phone but it's time for me to get the functionality of a smart device since I'm always on call and constantly on the internet.

My hand is leaning towards the Samsung i760 because of WM6 Pro and Embedded Wifi. Also, it actually has dial buttons on the phone as well as a slide up full qwerty keyboard. And damn, Samsung makes some pretty tough handsets.

The only downside to this device is that it's an EVDO Rev 0 device, whereas my old phone is a Rev A device. I've been checking to see if there are any other future smart phones verzion will be offering but the only ones I see is the HTC IRIS and no one knows when that is coming out.

I'm curious if anyone else has any experiences with a windows mobile device.

[Tessian]

Some of my coworkers opted for the Treo and with the latest Windows Mobile (6?) they say it runs pretty nice.

I personally still love my Blackberry 8820. Not sure what the difference is with the 8830 but the 8830 has wifi built in which is quite nice.

[Flip]

And as mentioned, i am actually very impressed and love my pearl. To each his own!

[Tessian]

And as mentioned, i am actually very impressed and love my pearl. To each his own!

I'd gladly trade my wifi for a camera like the pearl has... but for business purposes I need that full keyboard. It is a whole new concept to carry around this as opposed to my last phone which was a flip phone. If I was getting it just as a personal phone I'd probably go with a pearl too.

[Flip]

my work e-mail and calendar push to it, but i guess i dont really use it for work all that much. I do send some e-mails, but the smart type works even better on the pearl (as opposed to T9 on a flip phone) since it is only two letters per button and layed out in qwerty form. I could see it being slightly annoying if you were constantly sending e-mail, though, so i agree somewhat.

[SineSwiper]

Never did like the idea of sending e-mails on those things. Reading them for important information, maybe, but these phones need to figure out a way to somehow pull out a full-size keyboard at a moment's notice. (There was that laser keyboard that I heard about, but hitting your fingers on a table would just make my fingertips hurt.)

Hell, the stroke language with the stylus was a step in the right direction, but I never saw it pop up on phones before. Why not just drop the separate language and have a OCR built in that translates it into text? Speech-to-text as an added option?

There's just too much of this implication in the industry that everybody will adopt to phone pad texting. It's a waste of time, considering nobody exists that could even text at a pathetic 20WPM.

[Flip]

Never did like the idea of sending e-mails on those things. Reading them for important information, maybe, but these phones need to figure out a way to somehow pull out a full-size keyboard at a moment's notice. (There was that laser keyboard that I heard about, but hitting your fingers on a table would just make my fingertips hurt.)

Hell, the stroke language with the stylus was a step in the right direction, but I never saw it pop up on phones before. Why not just drop the separate language and have a OCR built in that translates it into text? Speech-to-text as an added option?

There's just too much of this implication in the industry that everybody will adopt to phone pad texting. It's a waste of time, considering nobody exists that could even text at a pathetic 20WPM.

Yeah, i def agree. Writing e-mails on any phone (even one that has dedicated keys per letter) is annoying, so really the ones that combine letters per key with a smart word predictor are the best... T9 works wel, but i think the 2 letter per button system like on the pearl work even better. Really, now that i think about it, the pearl could be a good business PDA.

[Julius Seeker]

I'm fine with the touchpad, so when I get my own Iphone later this year I'll be happy.

Possible interest to some: One model that I have taken a look at lately is the LG Voyager (VX10000 from Verizon) which combines the two; on the candybar is a touchscreen, in the clamshell is a qwerty keypad. Though after playing around with it I am quite certain that it is no where near as powerful as the Iphone. The internal screen is similar to the vx9900 (from Verizon) in that it is sunk back a bit, a bit of an annoyance, but not a big deal. It does lack WiFi though, and it has a strange resolution (like 400 by 240).

Before any of the anti-Iphone faction complains, many of the features, like video recordning, that the Iphone lacked before are now available unofficially, and it is only a matter of time before we get an official program now that the SDK's are released (Oh, and it's all free).

[SineSwiper]

Yeah, i def agree. Writing e-mails on any phone (even one that has dedicated keys per letter) is annoying, so really the ones that combine letters per key with a smart word predictor are the best...

Yes, I agree there, but I don't see it adopted enough. I had a Nokia that did that, and though I couldn't type that fast on it, the word completion made it a lot friendlier for texting.

[Imakeholesinu]

Yeah, i def agree. Writing e-mails on any phone (even one that has dedicated keys per letter) is annoying, so really the ones that combine letters per key with a smart word predictor are the best...

Yes, I agree there, but I don't see it adopted enough. I had a Nokia that did that, and though I couldn't type that fast on it, the word completion made it a lot friendlier for texting.

I have to say the word completion on my new phone is by far the best one I've ever used. It doesn't auto-complete unless you select the word. It is almost on par with the V600 I had with T-Mobile (I miss that autocomplete!).

I picked up the phone today and it hasn't left my hand since except to rest in the $20 holster I bought at the mall for it.

I have a huge learning curve ahead of me in order to utilize this phone to its full potential. A few things already stand out that I would have liked to have seen in this phone.

There is no side scrolling so menus must be navigated through using the D-pad on the front of the screen. Secondly, the phones screen goes to sleep after 10 seconds by default. Pressing the button on the very top of the phone wakes it up.

Battery life definitely is a bit on the low side, but that could be because of the Bluetooth radio and having to transfer my contacts and photos via Bluetooth instead of by cable. (Edit - Verizon rep put the standard life battery in by default, not the extended life. I received a low battery warning 5 hours later after using the phone to make 4 phone calls and send 3 text messages. I don't think the standard battery was fully charged though. I will do more tests later on this but out of the box, it seems that Battery life is a little under what I expected from the standard battery.)

On the right hand side of the phone you have your voice dial/windows button. Holding down this button activates the voice dial. This isn't the traditional voice dial like on the old Verizon phones with the sexy female voice prompting you. I was prompted with a "beep" tone. Then I spoke call so-and-so mobile and it would ask for confirmation and dial the number.

I've been trying to use the keyboard to do all of my messaging and I know it will take me a bit to re-learn how to do it since I've been doing it all on a standard text message feel. Now that I've got a full qwerty keyboard to use I keep forgetting to not hit keys twice. The auto-complete feature is nice but I think I'll type stuff out first before I start using it as a crutch just to train myself.

When going from the candy bar mode to the keyboard mode, the screen takes roughly 2 seconds to adjust, which isn't that bad. I've been fooling around with applications and web-browsing seems to be pretty fast and applications load within 1-2 seconds after selecting them. The pointer is on the right hand side of the phone and expands fully as you draw it out with your finger nail.

Below the windows/voicecommand button is the "ok" button which lets you select things just like with using the center button on the front d-pad. The camera button is located right below that. The camera takes OK photos but nothing spectacular.

This is a rev. 0 device and not a rev. A so if you are planning on using this as a modem you might notice a difference in speeds uploading content.

On the left side of the phone is the MicroSD slot and the volume controller. There are also two silver buttons on either side of the display for answering and ending calls but this can also be done on the touch screen.

Web browsing is done by IE. It is quick and I can navigate to most pages.

Almost every thing is customizable with this phone. You can change it from right handed to left handed use.

The phones keys are all rubberized and have a nice tactile feel to them. The spacing is just perfect for me, but I'll admit I have thin fingers compared to an average persons hands. All the keys are backlit also which looks really neat but I'm sure at a very high cost for the battery.

Like I said, I definitely recommend buying a case for the phone. I'm going to see if I can order some screen protectors from online because the screen does pick up fingerprints and lint very easily. The only downside to the screen protector will be if the stylus gets caught on a bubble. I attempted to keep the protector that came with the phone on there but the stylus and touch screen were very unresponsive. Hopefully this won't be the case when I get the protectors that are built for the phone.

Overall, I'm very content with the phone thus far. This is my first smartphone I've ever owned. I'll post later with the software but I've got to eat before I go out drinking tonight.

If you need more information about phones you should check out phonearena.com and cnet.com for reviews on the i760 and the VX6800. I did most of my customer reviews research and professional research off of these two sites.

[Lox]

Has anyone ever used the AT&T Tilt? I'm in the market for a smart phone now so I went to the store today. I was checking out the Tilt, the Blackberry 8820, and the Blackberry 8310.

I was originally leaning towards the 8820 or the 8310 because I've heard good things about Blackberry's. But the Tilt seemed really nice too. The biggest downside was the thickness of it. But it's running Windows Mobile 6 and supposedly there are tons of extra apps you can get for it for free.