Cell Phone - Samsung i760

I am on Verizon and because of some family situations will not be leaving Verizon.  So, I am on a quest to find the right phone for me!

I started by listing what I want in a phone/PDA:

  • Read books and/or articles (PDF, MS Reader, Mobi Reader, HTML)
  • Listen to music (WMA & MP3)
  • Synchronize with Outlook 2003/2007 plus plug-ins
    • Plaxo - synch contact s, calendars and tasks
    • Franklin-Covey's Plan Plus - Weekly planning, seven habits
  • Play video (MPEG, AVI)
  • Display Images (JPG, BMP, GIF, PNG, etc)
  • Ringtones
    • Use my own sound bites
    • Not be limited to Verizon's outrageous pricing for a song snippet
  • Work integration
    • Where I am at right now mainly supports Blackberries
    • Pushed email?  (I am not convinced I *need* this, pulling every 15 minutes is more than adequate and that's why I have a phone)

What I've found that fits the bill are the Windows based phones and the crackberries.  Unfortunately, the crackberries only do about 40% of what I want it to do so i am stuck in the Windows realm.  While familiar, I keep hearing about all the gotchas.  And it seems to be different for everyone I talk to.  The sales people at Verizon hear that I need it for work maybe 5% of the time and they are all about the push technology in the crackberries.  While this is great for my wife that is handling 1/3 of the execs at her work, I don't have those needs.

So, looking at windows based devices has left me scratching my head.  When i carried a PDA I had the ability to do most everything I could do on my laptop, though sometimes in limited ways.  And that was back in the Win CE 1 & 2 days.  Now, with the integration of phone options it appears that the PDA was the after thought.  Clumsy to use interfaces, keyboards so small they are worthless, navigation is not very simple, etc.  However, one phone that looks promising is the Samsung i760.  I've handled a demo (dummy) model and it feels great in the hand.  The form factor fits how I operate and the battery life is *supposed* to be much better.  Since it is Windows Mobile 6 all of my Outlook plug-ins should have no problems as the companies support Windows Mobile platforms.  So far - I am looking forward to this device.

If you have any "advice" or feedback, please do so.  :)
Cross posted from my blog at http://schema.sol3.net/kbarrows

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