Smart phones are all the rage these days. Barry Gerber looks at two popular smart phones and a PDA with a built-in phone. His conclusions will surprise you and the telecoms that are making a killing every which way but straight up on smart phones.

Neither one of the Motolola phones in this article are SmartPhones.
Nowadays all the phones are called this way, but this doesn't make them "Smart".
What I'm trying to say is that comparting a BlackBerry with a standard phone is unfair. I know those two motorola phones. They're cool, but the software is crap.
If you want to have a good competitor for the BlackBerry in "phone-size", look for other phones using "Windows mobile". Speaking of Motorola, they have the MPX220, a clamshell phone with a 200Mhz processor, MiniSD slot, 1Mpx camera and bluetooth. And it works wonders with Outlook or Exchange. And is smaller.

So, where are the smarthphones on this article?
I see none. Motorola smartphones are the Mpx series, namely Mpx200, Mpx220 and (prototype) Mpx300.

The razr is just a phone with a big screen. nothing else. It even has little memory to store data and there is no way to install new programs nor expand the memory. Its just a phone with all eye-candy and marketing arround it. Let alone the v557 which is just a common and current "basic" cell phone.

The Mpx's on the other side are practically phone-sized computers. I have the Mpx200 with 1gig memory card and its really far more useful than a razr.
It is a pendrive, phone, Mp3 player, navigation assistant, wireless modem, etc etc. It is not like a phone with windows mobile, it is like a computer with a phone.

Now, i think that comparing a PDA with a Smarthphone is like comparing a laptop with a desktop. Both have similar funcionality. But they were designed with different objectives in mind.

This article is not writen from a neutral standpoint. It looks like if it had been writen by a fanboy of PDA's willing to rant about "smartphones". And to make it worse the "Smartphones" featured on this article are not even smartphones, but just common cell phones.
the article should be rewriten to include REAL smartphones. And rewriten from a more neutral perspective.
I read THG to get constructive comments about hardware, not to hear kids ranting about something they dislike. There are forums and blogs for that.

(If you find mistakes in my writing, let me know. English is not my native languaje).

I've been thinking about getting a Palm Treo 650 for quite some time now. I would really like to see a nice functionality review of one. Especially with the document/email capabilities of DataViz's Documents to go/Inbox to go.

A nice feature dumb phones have is predictive typing, T9, eZiTAP and iTAP are the most famous and most let you type be pressing each button once.

Opera Mini has been available in many parts of the world and lets you browse html pages on regular phones too. And there are others too like NetFront browser, not quite sure of the name but the SE W600 has it.

So i read the article and the question asked is why pda phones are out bought by the smart phone. First not everyone has 300-500 dollars to blow on a phone. Most smart phones you can get for 50-100 dollars. I got a $100 smart phone free when i signed a new contract with cingular. Most people do that as well. Im not dissing the pda, cause i want one when i have the money, but because i run a business. Smart phones are sleek in design and small, you can put them right in your pocket, Blackberrys and most pdas are big and you cant really put them in your pocket. Its a fad thing, kids and most adults dont want to be walkin around with some gigantic thing on the waste, thats what losers do, or they would say that. Another thing is the text messaging thing on having to press the button many times, People have had to do that before pdas ever came out so most people i know that text message can fly through that, probably faster than anyone on here can type a text message on their pdas. So conclusion, smart phones are cheaper and sleeker and more fashionable, while pdas are more user friendly and are over all better pice of technology. But technology will never overcome fashion in the world today.

who wrote this crap? here I am expecting a decent comparison of "smartphones" to PDA+phone and then I read this article... I agree with everyone in this post regarding a clear lack of actual smartphones, but what makes this article even more useless is it failed to develop both sides of the argument and only rambled about all poor features of motorola phones and not contrasting those to the Blackbery. the writer must have an axe to grind.

I just checked out the mpx220 on moto's site, it seems like a nice phone. I still have a prob with the keypad.

My standing is as such: Use my ipaq for the usefull stuff, im, web access, organizer, gps navigation, voip calls, all when in wifi range (most everywhere I go) and use my LG 6100 for Calls. Two devices sure, but the pda is far better for everything else than the simplified controls of a smartphone. It works flawlessly with my exchange server, IM server, and Asterisk server at home with no provider costs, let me say that again NO PROVIDER COSTS.The only difference usability wise with the mpx220 and the phones reviewed, is the inclusion of win mobile features, all the trates of a cell phone still apply, small screen, poor keypad, etc. So I understand his reasoning for not specifically targeting "smart phones" as they have the same issues as "basic phones".

I don't think this series is meant to be a neutral bunch of articles. He's challenging technology from his own perspective. The forums are a great place to put out OUR ideas and reasons why we thing OUR ideas are better than his. It's a great discussion starter. I personally think it's a good idea.

I also think predictive typing sucks, I can still type ten times faster with my fingertip on my pda than the predictive type, plus my vocabulary has way too many words not in their dictionaries.

You're kidding here. Aren´t you?
How can you compare those mobile phones? The two "smartphones" are more likely to be a greate design mobile phones with some more features. The blackberry is the opposite. A swiss "army electronic knife" with one funny feature: you can make calls (and judging by the size, maybe pizzas too).

As for the size of the buttons that you are allways complaining...I´m pretty sure you have to take off the baseball gloves to type a message!

I'll stick with my smart phone, thanks.

- T9 word is pretty effective and I can type quickly and accurately with it.

- All I really want is a phone that is small and makes calls. The fact that it plays mp3s, takes pics/videos, does email & internet, etc is all bonus stuff.

- I just like the smaller, simpler flip up smart phones better - because after all, I just want a phone.

I don't really think this makes a convincing case for why smart phones are crap, rather, only why PDA phones are great devices. But they are very different and appeal to different people. Youth & kids probably don't want a big PDA phone, however if I was a business man I'd probably want a PDA phone because I would need and want it for that purpose.

Audience, my friend. Smart phones have a market and so do PDA phones...

Like I said, I'll stick with my smart phone.

One of the biggest downfalls of the industry is the greed of the service providers. The only way to get a Treo 650 from Telus is to buy a really expensive package that includes talk AND data plans. There is no option to use just the phone capabilities of the Treo 650 and use it as a PDA alone. I don't need to get my email and surf the web on a mobile device. I just want to combine the funtionality of a cell phone and a convenience of a PDA into one device.

If the greedy service providers were more flexible with service plans instead of forcing customers to buy services they don't want they would sell alot more high end devices such as the Treo 650.

And don't get me started on wanting to make my own ringtones for smartphones. Having to buy a $50 dollar CDROM to do something that should have been included with the phone is criminal.

Is there a CEO that is available for a good slapping?
Cheers.

The crap articles, I think, are part of the new look at tomhardware, whenever you see a title with "who designed this crap" it pretty much means it's a rant and should be read as such.

I like rants, rants are cool, they remind you not to believe everything a salesman says or anything you read... as long as it does not mean a smaller number of serious, objective and comparative articles. And honestly I've been reading more of those at anandtech's than tom's lately.

People expecting a serious product comparison from an article with "crap" in it's title just lacks jugment...

Now, on the smartphones topic, I've been a Blackberry user and hated it, first because of the size and shape (feels like talking in the TV remote) Also, it sounded like a can with a string in it. Another thing I hated was e-mail attachments... I just couldn't open most of them! (I have to admit I had the last of the monochrome RIMs)

I am now the happy user of an Audiovox SMT5600 with windows mobile! of course I don't type much on it because of the phone keyboard but I get to read my e-mails, most attachments, calendar, contacts and store files!

My only comment against the article is that it compared RIMs to dumb phones and not smartphones. On the other hand there is enough to rant about cellular providers and their sales and marketting people... their lack of support ect to write a book... and call it "The satanic verses of mobility"

Of course, whether you see the razr etc as a smartphone or not you can't assume people are buying it for that type of functionality. i think the market hype greatly exagerates the popularity of web browsing/game/cameras/etc on phone. Most everyone I know want a phone that is easy to carry (ok and cool looking too) and could care less about the rest. I've never once gone online from my razr, partly because I get charged extra, and partly because I'd rather do so from work or from home where I get a full screen, full keyboard, and a freaking fast net connection. While the camera is a fun toy the resolution and features blow compared to my cheapo digital camera and it had no effect on my buying decision. And every cell phone on the planet provides good enough text messaging for most people's usage.

Conclusion: smart phones/pda phones functionality might matter to business users but the sleek basic cell will out sell due to price and size as most people couldn't give a da$n about the other features.

Smart Phones Stink, PDA Phones are for people with only one testicle.

a cellphone is a cellphone, i want it able to make and receive calls, and that's all i want. would i ever want to carry your so called "super small size" smart phones? no, they are neither small and i dont need all those useless functionalities. would i ever want a PDA phone? HELL NO, if carrying a PDA phone makes you feel like you can do lots more things than others, and thus compensating your emotional feelings because you only have one testicle, go ahead.

......and yes, i am still using my nokia 8890.