I'm looking to buy a cellphone. I currently have a Motorolla E815, and I'm looking at a few possibilities:
- HTC Touch Pro
- Blackberry World
- LG Shine

What do you guys think/recommend and why?

The new blackberry touch looked awesome. One of my patients had it.

Just depends on how much you want to pay for it.. The first one is CRAZY expensive! Blackberry world's are cool though. My sister had one and it was nifty. =) Kinda confusing to use at first, but you get the hang of it after awhile.

Are you looking for a touch one? I am hoping to buy the N96 once it drops a little its price, but I am pretty happy with a generic Chinese one. I wish I could get a DoCoMo.

What is your price range?

I would get the cheapest phone which allows you to use your voice to communicate with people. It is remarkably faster than typing a message with your thumb.

Both cell phones I've owned have been free^* because I only cared about that one archaic feature.

^*With two year contract.

Probably depends what you want from the phone; definitely Blackberry if your main use will be any sort of typing activity. Otherwise, I understand the HTC to be quite good for web browsing.

All I want from a cellphone is voice communication and text messages. If it weren't for the fact that I want unlimited SMS storage, extended contacts and callendar from time to time, I'd still be using my archaic Nokia 3310, now I have Nokia 5310 and it serves me as mp3 player as well, but that's just a bonus feature.

If you really want smartphone I'd reccomend HTC Touch Pro, though I've never been a fan of these.

I used to be like you, but since I obtained a smartphone I've found that having an email client in my pocket is a particular bonus, and the browser helps fill commuting minutes. I'm not sold on stuff like maps though; a lot of the applications still fail the basic "is it actually easier than just asking someone?" test.

I have a Touch Pro myself and it's the best Windows Mobile phone I've ever used.

I have a Nokia E71 and it is the best phone I ever had (and I had many).

I use it for (sorted by priority):
Calendar
Mail
Icq/aim
Surfin (posting this from my phone)

I had WinMobile phones as well. I don't like them too much. But thats a question of taste.

The calendar of the E71 is really great.

Same can be achieved by reading a book or listening to music. I do the latter when I don't have lust for reading.

Yes. All these things help fill commuting minutes.

For price range I'm looking at about $700 before tax. I don't like contracts so I won't be entering one. My carrier is a CDMA carrier, so no GSM phones for me.

TH is a semantic hawk!

I have a blackberry curve and it was really nice when I bought it but has since been "feature-leaped" by all the other new phones. I still really like it and am glad I made the purchase.

Why won't you sign a contract? You can save a bundle on a phone. Are you really going to want to cancel your plan within 2 years after paying out the ass for a phone?

i personally love my BB

I'd rather pay up front now while I have the money than be stuck paying for a phone long term if I can't.

EDIT:
For the HTC:
No Contract: $599.99
1 Year: $599.99
2 Year: $449.99
3 Year: $349.99

Ah, I missed one word. Anyway I didn't mean to argue, just to point out that there are other options. To each his own, for example I can't imagine I'd be browsing the web from a cellphone. It's just too small. Not to mention that I use metro half of the time and there's no signal.

My main obsession with the phone was being able to watch videos. I had a N90, and aimed at something better, but since I bought the R4 for the Nintendo DS, there is no need for that, I can watch videos in a 3'' screen, bigger than most phones, and it can even play good games.

Now I want to buy a DoCoMo phone, to practice my kanji. But they are usually locked and pretty expensive. Plus, they are extremely awful.

I have an iPod touch, which plays videos, but I think I've only used that functionality once. I'm more interested in mobile internet/good texting/decent battery

Unless you're like me, where you'd forget what the last person said, or get the directions confused so you'd have to keep asking people (and you don't normally ask people since you get to nervous to do so most times). So even a crappy map application has its uses

I think before you buy one, you should look through enough cell phone info on internet or magzines.

Is anybody else on Bell?

Bell? Last I heard that name, the company changed their name 3 times (basically, it reformed after the US gov broke it up... it was a stupid break up though, as it was state based!)

Uhhh, this Bell: Bell.ca

I love my Nokia N95, all the features of the Nokia E series, with more stacked on, but it all comes with a stacked on price. How many other phones have GPS, full map and directions, with the ability to edit word/excel documents. Not to mention full media buttons, to act as an 8 gig mp3 player, with flash video, and RealMedia playback. I have also added a divx player to it, but it has issues keeping up with the throughput, and I have to recode them so the phone can keep up.

I would have to agree with Bludau, the E series is the way to go. Nokia N series has way to many features that you will never use. Where the E series just about has it right, assuming you already own an mp3 player.

My phone can do all you said and more. I can put however big of a memory card I can get (8GB, 16GB, 32GB in the future, etc), I get full GPS and navigation, I can install Google Maps Mobile, I have Office Mobile. I can play Windows Media/divx/etc, probably real media if I installed a player (but why bother, RM sucks), etc.

They are hardly unique features in the smartphone world. The only "smart" phone that probably can't do some of that is the iPhone (can't edit office docs).

Most of the problems with the iPhone will be fixed with iPhoneOS 3.0 released (or now if you Jailbreak). I real admit that a good chunk of these features should have been in there since day one, but at least we will finally get them. As for editing office docs, there are many apps to alleviate that issue.

I love my iPhone to death. I had to revert back to a my old WinMo phone for a week when the dock connector fried. Lets just say I'm glad I switched and am never going back, although there are a few things I miss.

I am just going to say this:

If you want a Media player that happens the be a phone, and are willing to accept a few missing features (filesystem access, no native Office, Tyranny of Apple, among others) then get an iPhone.

If you want a highly customizable platform and are willing to except lackluster thirdparty support (outside of the ROM community), substandard default software, lack of love from Microsoft, then grab a WinMo phone and jump over to XDA-Developers

If you just want to abuse yourself get a Palm OS device (Palm Pre excluded)

Let's not forget that having an iPhone forces you into an expensive as hell AT&T plan. I have no major issues with my Windows Mobile phone, and I pay $30/month+tax for my plan, including unlimited texting/data/etc.

Windows Mobile phones are fairly open, you can pretty much do whatever you want without paying and being censored by Apple, and without hacking the phone as well.

Apple sells standalone iPhones,^[1] since the AT&T exclusivity contract expired, with prices between $599 and $699.

Relevantly to Cody though, and besides any other consideration, I think the iPhone is GSM only, that being the predominant international standard. His carrier is CDMA only.

I'm surprised those bastards are still around. Probably because they put their leaches on every mom's computer.

iPhone is GSM, so you don't have many choices in the USA anyway, so you'd still be stuck with AT&T most likely. So if you're going to pay their rip off prices, you might as well get the contract/subsidized phone cost from them.

I'm actually paying less for my iPhone then I was with my WinMo phone, however I will admit I was an idiot and didn't setup things right on the WinMo phone and that I also have a 47% discount from AT&T now on the iPhone Still though I will admit the iPhone plan is a tad absurd when compared to other phones. At least its not Rogers in canada.

Also while WinMo is more liberal on what you can do with them (eg installing software) it is in know way an open platform. Just to install a different ROM I either have to SuperCID, HardSPL, or use a hacked RUU updater. This mentions nothing of the fact that inorder to do any coding on the thing your have to pickup a copy of Visual Studio 2005 or 2008, at least with the iphone I can jailbreak and snag a copy of GCC for it. And WinMo can be locked down just as tight as the iPhone in default configs, just look at the Moto Q or the T-mobile Dash. And Microsoft can be censoring too, there is a reason that most of the ROM links on XDA and elseware are hosted on thirdparty sites, MS got pissed when WinMo6 got leaked and hacked to run on most every device.

Actually the contract did not end, its still in effect until 2010 at least. They are just trying to clear out stocks and to get more people signed up on AT&T, they maybe contract free but the are certainly still locked to ATT's network.

One day the phone companies here said "Ok, forget CDMA and all the other standards, everyone will use GSM". And in 8 months, every company switched. They even sent GSM phones to those in CDMA networks that could not or would not want to buy the GSM phone themselves. Why can't USA do something similar? Wouldn't it be better if you had a single network?

Of course, GSM is pretty unstable (limited nodes, which lowers signal strength and sometimes even leave you without it), but looks like it is the standard to use.

Interesting. The article says the Apple Stores sells them unlocked and without contract, though. If you buy from an AT&T store they asks you to be an existing client only.

GSM here is pretty poor. Out east GSM is new in the past few years, and it's still lacking in many places where the local CDMA provider has been well established for many many years.

That being said, the two CDMA providers here are planning on switching to GSM sometime in the future.

It is a lot more open than the iPhone just because of that. Anyway, the reason for having to install a hacked SPL/whatever isn't WinMo's fault, it has to do with the bootloader written by the manufacturer, because they lock it down to only load signed ROMs. As far as GCC, I dunno if there is a version that can target WM or not, so I won't argue that point. And if you get a phone with a locked down default config, it is almost definitely the carrier's fault. MS doesn't do any of the locking down, whereas Apple does.

As far as ROMs, ppcgeeks has FTP space hosting roms for most people. MS doesn't bother them too much, in fact, I only recall MS taking action once in recent time the whole time I've followed the WM scene (~2-3 years). They sent a cease and desist to remove one specific rom that was using a kernel from a beta version of WM 6.5 that was covered by NDA. The cease and desist specifically mentioned that only that rom and ones based on the same base were to be removed, all the roms using publicly released code were not bothered. And I doubt it is Microsoft not knowing about it, because said C&D letters were received within a couple of days of the ROM being posted, so it seems like they screen for such issues pretty frequently.

You mention them going after people when WinMo 6 got leaked. Well of course, because it was leaked. It seems to me that publicly released stuff is fair play, but anything leaked is a big no no.

It seems pretty obvious, at least to me, that Windows Mobile seems pretty open. Granted you don't get all the source code or anything crazy like you do with Android, but you can do mostly whatever you want.

I've never known that CDMA is used for anything besides data streaming. Around here GSM is standard, all networks work with it and send voice and text through it. CDMA and other technologies are used for mobile internet, which costs hell of a money.

Technically they are switching to LTE, which iirc is a combination of CDMA and GSM, taking the best parts of each, but it is more GSM than it is CDMA. And also, iirc most places will either use LTE or Mobile WiMax. Mobile WiMax will reach the market first in a large way, but I think many carriers are still betting on LTE even if they will be a couple years late.

Around here, Verizon Wireless is switching to LTE, and Sprint is staying CDMA, but rolling out WiMax for 4g data.