your phone

what kind of phone do you have?

what do you like about it?

what don't you like about it?

what do you see on other phones that you wish your phone had?

i'm being forced to get a smart phone in order to bring myself into the 21st century, but i haven't a clue what is out there.

If it was me, i'd get a blackberry with a keyboard. From what i've heard, the touch-screen technology still could be improved a bit. Some AT&T phones have horrible interference around microphones and speakers. I think this also extends to T-Mobile as well. AFAIK, Verizon and Sprint don't have these issues.

In terms of features, the Droid (Verizon) doesn't look bad at all. In terms of style? That's another story.

I made the jump to smart phone this past fall and picked up a Droid. The touch screen is great; even with my fat fingers. The GPS capability is good and I am happy with the number of apps.

My suggestion is to play around with the display models at a store. I didn't like how the iPhone touch screen worked, and figured the keyboard on the Android is a nice bonus feature. Also, you might want to check out the Nexus One phone.

In February I switched from a Blackberry 8900 to the iPhone. I miss the actual keyboard that the Blackberry had, and I think the Blackberry handles email a bit better, but other than that I prefer the iPhone. For me, even as capable as my Blackberry was, it still seemed like a phone first, whereas the iPhone seems like a handheld computer that also makes phone calls, if that makes any sense.

As for service, I'm not sure that Verizon's 3G coverage is much better than AT&T's. But, I do know that when I go to UK football games, I usually can't get data access but my wife -- who has a Blackberry through Verizon -- almost always can.

I currently have an iPhone 3G, but am looking to switch to an android based phone on verizon this summer. There are a lot of trade offs, but I overcame most of those by jailbreaking my phone, but that's also a hassle to maintain. You just can't beat the iphone's current application selection, but android is getting there. Knowing I'll be able to watch all the NCAA march madness games on CBS's new app or listen to every match of the world cup on the ESPN radio app through my iphone is just sweet when you work someplace with heavy firewalls. The gap is closing though as more and more apps get ported over to android.

First Smartphone I got was the iPhone 3G last year. I can imagine life without one, but it would suck. I love the iPhone and all the apps. I would estimate about 60% of my use is non-talking: email, texting, web, etc. I find the interface very easy and it took no time to get use to. The lack of a real keyboard can be a bit bothersome, but typing on it isn't hard, just slow(er).

The biggest drawback to iPhone is the coverage. AT&T is not an extensive network, especially the 3G. Although there are rumor about a Verizon iphone, they are just speculation. Until we know for sure when the Apple/ATT contract expires we can only speculate. I've never been a Blackberry fan; they seem big and ugly. I have not had a chance to try the Droid, although it looks pretty cool.

Unless you NEED a full keypad or are anal about customizing the interface stuff, the iphone will not disappoint. Great piece of equipment.

Fair enough. I don't think there's any doubt that Verizon has the more extensive network and it's well documented that Verizon spends more per customer on its network than AT&T. But, as I said, it's been my experience that that really only affects me when I'm at Commonwealth and my data access gets jammed. It's also happened at Keeneland. (I live in Lexington.) Always works when I'm at CCS, though, so the critical mass must be somewhere north of 15-20K people.

do all the phone companies use a sim card?

Verizon doesn't and I don't think Sprint does. If I were to switch to another Verizon phone, their stores have a device that can transfer the phone book. I think i'd have to buy a microSD card for photos and videos.

so if you buy a phone through a particular company you can only use that phone through said company?

For the most part -- yes. That is what makes the Nexus One so appealing. However, do you really want to drop another $300 to be able to switch companies at a moments notice?

GSM phones (AT&T, TMobile) use sim cards, CDMA phones (Verizon, Sprint) do not. Here's a good explination of the different technologies.

I thought I'd chime in - I had be using a used Dash without data service for a while. I hated the Windows OS on it; slow as shit. Then the screen cracked. I was still actually in my 22 month contract window from my last phone upgrade, so the non-smart phones were not available to me for the discounted price, but the smartphones were. So I got a T-Mobile myTouch (runs Android). I love it. Not so sure I'm going to love the data plan cost, but the phone and it's capabilities are amazing. It's fully touch-screen, and for the most part that works brilliantly. I have a bit of a problem getting touches near the edge to register reliably ("P" is my nemesis). I've got Gmail (full Google integration, actually), a client than can access my work email, Twitter, a web browser, music, youtube, sudoku, etc etc etc. Since the phone has GPS, you can fire up Google Maps and you basically have a portable GPS device that plops your location down on a map (and can integrate with the directions on Google Maps, and apparently can read the directions to you while you are driving, tho I haven't tried it yet). I have pulled up Google Maps with the traffic overlay to check out traffic congestion during my commute home from work already.

The barcode scanner application is pretty cool. It uses the camera to scan in barcodes, and you can actually browse a version of the marketplace on your computer that displays 2D barcodes for each app. Scan those with your phone, and it jumps right to the app in the Marketplace on your phone (saving you some typing and searching). You can also generate 2D barcodes for contacts in your phone (including yourself), and let other people scan them right off of your screen to add them to their contacts. It's a slick system.

I've even downloaded a MythTV remote control application. If I'm connected to my LAN's wireless, I can control my MythTV frontends from my cell phone. Pretty sweet.

I am about to graduate and have already gotten a full time job. I am looking to find a smart phone and am mainly wanting to use it for email purposes. I can be out of the office a great deal and need a way to stay "plugged in" while away. Any suggestions?

I'd guess any of 'em will work. While the Android has awesome Google Mail integration, I have an IMAP mail client connected to my Groupwise mail that works just fine for work email.

Off topic -- Don't buy, or worse lease, a new car. I have seen too many recent grads make this killer mistake. Especially. Ones who do a lot of driving/commuting for work.l

On topic -- Talk to your company's IT Department. They may have special rules regarding remote log-in from non-company assets.

Off topic -- lucky for me I have an older car but only 63000 miles so lucky for me she (delorius is her name) is good for awhile.

On topic -- I know they have pretty much zero rules regarding your statement above. The person who held the position for me had a Blackberry.

It's good advice in general, tho. It didn't occur to me because I work at a high-tech place where we have no rules about that stuff (I self-maintain my work laptop, a Linux machine, and we have every kind of smart phone under the sun in use here; Blackberry, Android, iPhone, etc).

For mail usage, you pretty much can't go wrong. I will say that I'm not a fan of Windows driven devices; my HTC Dash was slow as shit. I prefer Android-based devices, but the iPhone is perfectly capable (and awesome) as a device for an end user.

I have a Moto Droid now after 14 months of a BB Storm. I like the Droid 10 times better. It should be noted though that I have rooted it and am running it overclocked to 1.2 GHz . The one thing the BlackBerries have a slight edge in is email. Everything else is Android by a landslide.

You've got a hard keyboard, right? I'm sure I'll speed up with experience, but it was a little faster to type with a hard keyboard. It's still a good experience with the touchscreen keyboard now, especially as I start to gain proficiency with Swype.

Yes, but I hardly ever use it unless I'm tying out a long email or entering a password. The touchscreen keyboard works fine for me and corrects most misspellings.

Something to keep in mind with email for phones: the iphone can only have one microsoft exchange account on the phone. I have my personal email set up, but not my work email although I would consider it if I could add a second exchange email account. Not sure how this is handled with other phones, but it's one of my biggest annoyances with the iphone.

I am thinking about getting the Palm Pre Plus from Verizon. Its between that and the Blackberry Storm. Anyone have any suggestions?