I have always loved my pda phones. I first had a G1000 pocket pc phone almost 4 years ago and it was a great pocket pc with internet access, but other than that it was bulky and could hardly be called a phone. I liked the keyboard idea built in and I knew that would go somewhere. I will get fun here and add a few pictures of the phones.
Here is the G1000, it was huge!
You had to touch the screen to dial which was a real mess in traffic. You could dial from the touch pad, but all the numbers were in a row like a keyboard. Not a very good idea. Well I convinced sprint almost a year later that the phone was bad for internet and they gave me a treo 600 which is exactly what I wanted except for the fact that it did not run windows and I could no longer try to hack my phone. I loved the ease of use of the treo. The hardware was superb and you could navigate without having to touch the screen. Only how I wished that they had windows on it instead.
Then comes the treo 700w.
This has got to be the best phone i have ever had. I am a little biased because I write Microsoft software, but so do millions of others. How many palm developers do you know? This phone is a little different to navigate from the treo 600, but easy once you get used to it. Buttons do different things now, but you have more options and the start menu is actually very helpful compared to the menu button i had to click on the keyboard to get to my real music player on my treo. Thats another thing that kicks ass with this phone. It already has the media player for video and audio. It also support subscription music which I have been hooked on for 6 months now. No more paying for music per track. Also this thing used the verizon EVDO network, which is superfast for a phone. I think around 700k. I also have it hooked up to my laptop so that I can go online anywhere there is a cell connection. So all around what else could i ask for. Anything i do ask for I could probably write it myself since it is windows based. I am not trying to sell you anything, but wow this device is going to make my life so much easier as I am sure it will for others in my situation.
Did I mention that it also receives email like the blackberry does and syncs contacts and calender for those that have exchange or other corporate email systems. The camera has a 1.3 megapixel also which takes much better pictures than the treo did. Oh and I almost forgot. I was able to remote desktop into my servers with the terminal services client it has installed on it. Unbelievable.
All in all this is a phone for developers and corporate types who want to be full integrated. I see a lot of potential for applications for this phone and others like it. Get out that Mobile SDK, I know I am going to.