Pantech Link (AT&T)

Pros: Texting
Screen brightness
Loud speaker
Texture on back of phone
multi-tasking capabilities
Price of phone

Cons: Navigation button is not programmable
Button layout is..well...off
Expect to pay for data charges (see first 2 cons...you'll figure out what I'm talking about when you play with the phone)
Camera is 1.3MP
Music player is crap...seriously
Menu

Summary: Again, decent phone...but...just barely. If you do not have a data plan, you "will" get hit with data charges (unless you are extremely, extremely careful). Buttons (Navigation) are not programmable; meaning left, right, and center "will" access the network (meaning data charges). Camera is poor; only 1.3 Megapixels. Music player is a joke, you have to have a compass and map just to find it. Using a bluetooth dongle on your computer is a joke; you can get it to work, but, you will hate how "unintuitive" it is. Phone address book is a joke; you can only put in so many characters before it stops you; some contacts come out as "John Smith - plumbe"....you don't get to put in the "R". You will have 2 clocks on your screen (why?...I have no idea...it's just this way...for some dumb reason). Blue "Fn" keys (wonder if that stands for "Function" or "F'ing"???) keys are extremely hard to see...if you want to type a word such as "it's", the ' is above the M (what makes it hard on you is the color and the way the qwerty buttons are rounded...get some light overhead and it makes it worse). Button to take a picture is on the lower right and side of phone...extremely weird layout except for those times you may take a picture with the phone turned sideways. Don't have any voice dialing feature...not a huge issue but would be nice to have. Menu icons should be deletable. I don't want (nor do I need) some of the crap on the phone (i.e.; IM, Mobile Email, Mobile Web, YPmobile, AT&T Music, or Online Locker). It's fine that this stuff is on the phone, but, please give me the choice of moving or deleting it if I want to. I find it extremely frustrating that you can't delete these items. Especially if you don't have or don't want a data plan. I can foresee some type of litigation concerning this...especially since you can't set up the phone to "not" access the data network.

On a scale of 1 to 10, I would give this phone a 4 as it currently is. If the Cons were corrected, the phone (for a "basic" phone) would jump up to a 9. The phone does have some nice features, but, these "nice" features are offset by the horrible ones you "will" run across. I am debating on whether or not to send it back to AT&T.........hope to run by a local AT&T store to "play" with some other phones to decide what I'm going to do.

As a side note, my wife gave this phone to me (early) as a Father's Day gift.....hate to sound unappreciative, but, I really wish she would have consulted me first. Of course, if you don't know what you're looking for, this phone looks deceptively good on the outside...it's the inside that sux. It's almost like buying a Ferrari that someone has put a Ford Pinto motor into.................