Axiom Home Page Forums General Discussion The Water Cooler Any cell phone gurus?

OK...so I am in the market for a new cell phone. The contenders are:

Audiovox SMT-5600: I like its size, and it has the functionality that I want/need. Price is right...but I am a bit worried about the Mobile PC platform.

Blackberry 7100: Again, good size and functionality. I am a Blackberry fan. Price is also right. Slightly bigger than the SMT-5600, and the memory is not expandable.

Treo 650: Has everything. Bigger than the other two. More costly.

Anybody have experience with any of these phones? Suggestions?

I have a Treo600 and love it. I wish I had a 650 because the bluetooh is great for a headset.

I've used a Palm for about 7 years and am a heavy outlook user. Perfect combination for me. Email, web, SMS, etc. I compress DVDs on it and have Incredibles, Monsters Inc, and Nemo on a 256MB card. (I use pqdvd.)

Highly recommend the Treo. Yes, it's a little big, but you get used to it. I use egrips and makes it less likely to drop.

My personal favorite is the Nextel 7520 BB. This thing does everything.... I love the service, which has improved significantly since the Sprint merger.

-Tarun

Have you seen the new Motorola Razr V3? Looks so cool and thin!!! unfortunately is available with Cingular only (or you have to pay full price to get it unlocked for use with other carriers). Too bad my fiance vetoed us switching to Cingular!! I could have gotten one free with a new two year plan....

Crazy... I just got a Treo 650 yesterday. I can let you know what I think of it once I know how it works, but at the moment I've used it for one (1) phone call. (And nothing else.)

Uninformed data point - our organization elected to go with Treos for those staff with company phones. People are thrilled with the functionality. Having been a Palm/Outlook user for several years, I would personally welcome the opportunity to carry only one device instead of two.

HOWEVER, more than one of my colleagues reports that the Treo phone reception quality is sometimes suboptimal.

The speculation here is that Blackberry will ultimately be odd-platform-out in the phone/PDA convergence wars. Probably Seattle bias

I ran into coverage problems but it palmone replaced my phone.

I have the Cingular GSM version. Works great, coverage is actually better (especially at home) than my CDMA Nokia, which I loved to death. W/ the AT&T merger, my coverage has gotten significantly better in the Bay Area.

You can try treocentral.com and mytreo.net for additional forums.

One of the cool things I've done is compress some Pixar movies. If I'm somewhere and my 2 year old needs a good distraction, I can whip out the phone and she can watch Monsters Inc for a few minutes. I don't even need a PC or DVD player. Then everyone's happy.

Thanks everyone!

Right now I am leaning towards the Audiovox SMT-5600. I just played with all the phones at the local Cingular store.

The next decision is whether to purchase the phone though buy.com or amazon.com and save about $200 with rebates, or get the phone directly from Cingular.

If I go directly with Cingular, I have the convenience of walking into the store whenever I have a hardware problem and get it dealt with there. If I go with buy.com or amazon.com, I have to deal with them on hardware issues through the phone.

I am playing around with my new Treo 650 right now. In fact, I am making this post from my phone! I have to get used to all the features this thing has, but being able to read and post here from anywhere is kind of a scary thought...

Keep that thing the hell away from me!