I'm at two years now with my Samsung SYNC from AT&T. It's a nice phone with what has to be the best screen I have ever seen on a phone. Battery life is okay, although the battery seems to be holding less of a charge now. It does, however, not have push mail, which would make the phone complete for me.

The Samsung Epix looks interesting, with a touch screen and all of the features you can get right now in a cell phone. I don't want to pay a premium for iPhone or Blackberry ownership. Matt's right. Trying to choose a phone that's right for you is a lot harder than it would seem first-blush. But I am leaning towards the Epix, unless someone can talk me out of it...

So you'd never heard of the Venice Biennial, or the Whitney Biennial, or any of the other arts biennials? You philistine! ;)

It's funny how far away from the typical geek I am when it comes to phones.

Nice article. I enjoyed that one.
Have I mentioned in the last 4 days I have a Blackberry?
:)

Is it scary that I found my own balance at Palm OS? (With the Centro...)

Although the browser sucks horribly. Maybe Palm will give us a Nova refla... oh, wait, this is Palm we're talking about. :(

From the article: "transition from enterprise to prosumer when it debuts in November."

Prosumer? I looked it up and it is supposed to be a combination of producer and consumer, but I don't understand the meaning of what the author used it for.

So I take it you picked the N82. How is the not-supported-in-US 3G band treating you? EDGE surfing is good enough for you?

BTW what's your TR forum handle again, if not asked already?

It's not too difficult to figure out a European phone.

GSM/GPRS/EDGE is second gen radio tech.
UMTS/HSDPA is third gen radio tech.

Handsets that operate on UMTS will also operate on GSM/GPRS/EDGE, they have both radios.

UMTS is somewhat underwhelming from a radio tech point of view. While the max transfer rate of EDGE won't match UMTS, UMTS has a ramp up phase before utilizing it's max bandwidth. Chances are UMTS will not show a benefit unless you are transferring large amounts of data at a time or browsing rich sites. As a matter of fact I wish I could disable UMTS on my phone because it drains the battery faster.

But UMTS's sidekick HSDPA is fast and makes a 3G phone worth it if you have a data plan that allows you to use it (I don't know what the carriers offer or if they charge separately). If you don't plan on using much data, keep your 2G phone or disable the UMTS radio if you can.

Buying a European phone will mean you are limited to carriers like AT&T, TMobile, and other carriers that offer GSM. Verizon, Sprint, Alltel and other CDMA carriers will not support your phone unless the phone has a CDMA radio as well.

I guess I'm strange in that I look at the network first and then I look at the phone, and then I look at the features besides the phone. But I use a phone for work, it absolutely must be reliable.

Having said that I think Verizon has the best network, and I've used it reliably in 10+ major metro areas without issue.

I've had Windows mobile phones last 2.5 years, and they are so buggy, yes even 6.1. I will wait a year and probably get android when it matures a tad. Thankfully the bugginess hasn't impacted me getting/sending calls.

Right now on a samsung i760, which people seem to ooo and ahhh at on the bus.

I can't stand the iphone. I support about 10 of them for users at work, and the onscreen kb drives me nuts. I've had 2 of them lock out network accounts because people put in password wrong (Apple doesn't make it especially easy to enter a pw.). I've had one iphone user have his contacts multiply by 4 times, so he now has ~4000 contacts. Known issue that has been going on for almost a year now by apple's forums. shameful.

Having said that there isn't a perfect smartphone out there, they all have flaws and need a lot of work.

Hmm, no CDMA phones on Symbian. I guess Verizon and Sprint users are out in the cold.

I'm glad to see Symbian has evolved considerably since I last used it on a Nokia 7610 (was it a 7610? somewhere in that era)... at the time the experience was not entirely pleasant due to stability and huge performance issues-- it was ok but "quirky" and as soon as quirky hit, you were screwed...

A large computer monitor works great for multitasking with a windowed user interface (especially when you're using a mouse) but a low-resolution mobile display with a stylus? Absolutely not. Having a tiny Start menu list to launch programs is an equally absurd UI choice that should have been ditched five years ago. I understand what Microsoft set out to do in the beginning: bring the familiarity and branding of Windows to mobile devices.

Absolutely, man. I'm actually still using a Windows Mobile... HTC Apache. :)

I love the phone, but... in comparison to some of the massively more touch-friendly devices out there... I'm beginning to question whether or not I will be sticking to Windows Mobile with my next device (and the tentative answer is: no).

When compared to other devices, which are plain and simply ready to be used by a tech-saavy, 21st century crowd, Windows Mobile is mind-numbingly far behind. I'm tired of having to rely on freeware developers to provide quasi-broken modern interface functionality for my phone. I'm tired of having to hack my phone to get it to work snappy (the Sprint WinMo 5.0 ROM was as slow as a G4 [rimshot], so I flashed it using a custom WinMo 6.1 ROM).

I hope they get their stuff together, but such a serious revamp to the user interface of Windows Mobile would essentially kill TONS of applications that still rely on a stylus. To be honest, that's kind of a problem across all of Microsoft's platforms: The past.`

I'm a symbian S60 user myself, sporting a venerable Nokia N80 that I've been lugging around for nearly 2 years now.

While the apps are sometimes handy, I find myself using the phone purely as a, gasp!, phone. Internet connection is a pain to configure, and with no 3G support in my local town, slow as molasses, so irrelevant to me.

As a phone, it is more sluggish than other Nokias I have used in the past, no doubt because of higher OS overhead.

It's ironic though that my 2 year old piece of junk is more advanced than many American phones, truly we need to crack open the carrier monopoly here to stimulate the market via good old competition and free market enterprise.

i <3 my n82 but i'm getting a free work iphone and so will be selling it.

gonna miss the videocalling, 5mpix cam (hate the flash), 6 day battery life etc.

I am currently using a cooked Windows 6.1 (20275.1.3.3 build) Rom in my O2 Atom. It works like a charm and has the Wisbar desktop advance installed in it . Those who have used Wisbar will know it makes Windows mobile interface just like Vista (Depends upon the theme) desktop.

sounds like you played price-is-right with your list of wants and needs, finding a phone that was the closest to what you wanted without going over on any particular feature. "a series of trade-offs", as they say these days.

still, i appreciated the overview. :)