Messaging Phones
Dexterity is the name of the game -- and your fingers do most of the talking. That's not to say you're not social, just that sometimes it's just easier to say it with a message or e-mail.
With a fairly active lifestyle, you're not always in the right environment to talk. Whether it's too loud in the club, too quiet in the business meeting, or more convenient to send a quick text, messaging gives you a fast way to leave short notes to friends and family.
To you, function matters more than form. And you prefer a keyboard to make life easier on the thumbs. With all the messages you go through, you're always on the lookout to speed up your typing. But that's not all you care about. A large screen eases the task and multimedia and a camera are in the back of your mind.
You know a picture is worth a thousand words and you've found all the shortcuts to say it with speed and efficiency.
Samsung Galaxy Stratosphere 2: Blasting Into Mediocrity
If you need a keyboard, it's okay. Otherwise, you can do better.
Samsung Galaxy S Relay 4G: Bring Out the Keyboard
One of the better QWERTYs and misleading 4G speeds make it a decent mid-range device.
Kyocera Rise: Android on a Budget
It's very average, and you can do better -- even for a cheap phone.
Motorola Photon Q: Great Keyboard, But Lackluster Performance
The slide-out keyboard is exceptional, but it's a bit underwhelming compared to the Galaxy S3.
Samsung Intensity 3: For No-Frills Calls and Texts
A decent basic phone, but consider low-end Android devices too.
LG Xpression: A Hot Mess
The fuzzy display, the lackluster camera, there's just so many problems, where to begin?
Motorola Droid 4: Better Than Ever
An outstanding keyboard and speedy 4G speeds match its expensive price tag.
LG Extravert: Not Much Extra
Everything from the measly screen to the puny camera says it's a hot mess -- move along, nothing to see here.
Samsung Captivate Glide
The slide-out keyboard on the Captivate Glide sets it apart from competitors. The design looks like a bunch of Samsung phones cobbled together -- a Franken-phone, if you will -- producing a thick brick of a device. That sounds bad -- and it is chunky -- but it's also very practical with a lot of attractive features, from a beautiful screen to a whiplash-inducing processor.
BlackBerry Curve (9370): New Isn't Always Better
The size is smaller and the screen is brighter, but wait for BlackBerry 10.
BlackBerry Curve (9360)
The BlackBerry Curve 9360 takes baby steps in the right direction, but it's severely outdated compared to the iPhone and Android, with a noticeable deficiency of apps.
BlackBerry Curve (9350): Too Little, Too Late
It's not a bad phone, but it's more of the same in a slightly slimmer package.
BlackBerry Torch (9810)
What do you want out of a smartphone? Same thing you had in the past, wrapped up in a new box? Or do you demand innovation, new features -- phones that give you something you've never had -- that you never even knew you wanted?
BlackBerry Bold (9900): A Great, But Dead-End, Product
It's fast, and the best BlackBerry yet, but alas -- avoid it unless you need a phone now.
Motorola Droid 2: Good, But Not Exceptional
It's a step down from the iPhone 4, but a powerful Android option with speedy Internet.
BlackBerry Torch (9800)
BlackBerry. The very name inspires intense emotion for almost everyone who owns a smartphone. For its fans, "BlackBerry" brings to mind words like functional, dependable, workhorse, indispensable. For its detractors, the words are more like ugly, old, out-of-date and passe.
Sharp FX
Sharp tries to do many things with its new FX, the successor to the Sidekick line, carried by AT&T. It's a touch screen phone, a texting phone with a slide-out keyboard and a 3G world phone with high-speed voice and data service.
Motorola Charm
The Motorola Charm is probably the closest you're ever going to get to owning an Android phone that looks like a BlackBerry.
Samsung Epic 4G
The latest in the Samsung Galaxy family of phones, Sprint's Epic 4G runs on the Google Android 2.1 platform and features a 4-inch "Super AMOLED" touch screen display. The lightweight handset is powered by a 1-gigahertz processor and supports blazing-fast WiMax 4G connectivity for data downloads.
Microsoft Kin Two
The Kin Two, like the One, is all about social networking. A constant stream of Twitter, Facebook and MySpace updates piles onto the phone's main stream throughout the day. But with updates organized and sized in a readable way, the stream never gets too cluttered. It also eschews being so simple a person can't find or will miss an update if checked semi-regularly. The phone makes it just as easy to send updates as it is to receive them.
Microsoft Kin One
If you've seen the commercials, you know the Kin line of phones is all about social networking. The Kin One, along with the Two, lets you to view Facebook, Twitter, MySpace and other social networking accounts in one screen, with updates from you and your friends visible in a list format. There's also a screen for favorites and a screen that holds all the traditional information on a phone, such as messages, pictures, contacts, music, email and Internet.
Motorola Devour
The Motorola Devour from Verizon focuses on integration, featuring new "MotoBlur" software that combines information about a contact in one entry -- from social networking sites like Facebook, emails, text messages or calendar systems. Its main screen has five panels that a person can flip through to check on and type in social networking updates and other messages instantly. You can also take photos and then share them on MySpace, Photobucket, Facebook or Picasa. Or you can check email accounts, text messages and social networking messages separately or in one universal inbox.
Palm Pixi Plus
The Pixi Plus packs speedy Internet and a unique messaging system into a compact shell. It operates on Palm's WebOS platform, so it stays connected to the Internet at all times, offering real-time alerts whenever a text, email, instant message or social update arrives. The platform also groups messages by person instead of message type, making conversations fluid regardless of the messaging source.
Palm Pre Plus
Released for Verizon, the Palm Pre Plus is the newest generation of the Pre, which dazzled many when it appeared last year. Like its predecessor, the Plus runs on WebOS, allowing you to flip through operations without closing anything, and sort messages and social networks by contact.
Motorola Droid
After months of hype, the Motorola Droid for Verizon has arrived, just in time for the Christmas shopping season. The Droid isn't quite the iPhone killer that Verizon's advertising suggests, but the handset raises the bar for app phones both in design and functionality. The sleek, touch screen handset runs on Google's Android 2.0 operating system and features a slide-out keyboard, removable battery and preinstalled 16-gigabyte microSD card. The Wi-Fi-enabled phone also comes with Google Mobile apps, including a GPS-enabled Maps app that offers voice-guided, turn-by-turn directions.
