BlackBerry Curve 8310 (red, AT&T)

Pros: Phone quality and email ease

Cons: Trackball is obnoxious, calendar and all organizational feature difficult to use and internet is mostly unreadable

Summary: I have had a palm treo for years, my first pda was the treo 180. When it died after 4 years I didn't want to give up the great organizational features but no one made pda's with the keyboard anymore so I upgraded to a smartphone pda from palm - it was horrid - no battery life (treo 680). When after 18 months it started acting up I started looking since AT&T no longer sold the treo 680 I needed to find something different. I read and I talked to people, everyone raves about thier Blackberry, so I decided to give the curve a try. It is a great phone call quality is good, I liked the weight and size. Setting up and using email was a breeze.

It is now 2 weeks later and I have returned the Curve. If you want a smart phone with good call quality and easy access to emails this is the phone for you.

But... if you use your pda for any of the organizational features it is lame at best. The calendar and other feature have less flexiblity than Outlook. (and I didn't think anything was worse than that) The trackball is very difficult to use. You think you are pushing and it has jumped down 2 lines in the menu.

As I said I used the palm for years and with palm you can organize everything. I had 16 catergories to choice from on my calendar and in the memo and task sections. Blackberry has none. No color coding, no seperating to keep lists managable.

The phone log will only allow you to sort by missed calls. I frequently sort prior calls by in-going and out-going - no longer an option.

The internet browser - one comes stanadard another was recommended as a download are very difficult to read. Pages don't configure to the screen. Every time you change a page the whole page shows and you have to do 3 or 4 step with the trackball to zoom in and make it readable. Also bookmarks are hard to get to. They are in a sub-menu of another sub-menu.

Maybe if I had more patience I would have gotten used to it. I also think that people who have used only Blackberry probably are more tolerant of the phone. Since email isn't my priority but keeping track of work assignments, grad school, personal stuff, etc is, I needed a smartphone that actually makes tracking stuff easy not frustrating.

So as bad as palm is for other stuff I went back for my calendar and task management needs.