It never ends. We, the gadget geeks of the world, will never stop lusting over the latest and greatest technology. So let's talk a little bit.

Upon moving to the great city of Boston I found myself in mobile phone heaven - I can use GSM providers now! Sure, Vermont does have some coverage for GSM thanks to Unicel, but the pricing plans are not really usable. Vermont is actually the only state without AT&T support. Cool, huh? But enough about my departure from the middle of nowhere.

I immediately signed up with T-Mobile and have been very happy since. I feel that the pricing is significantly better than that of Cingular (now AT&T), and the coverage is easily comparable. Of course, I can't have an iPhone but I don't particularly like touch screens. I got my fingers (and immediately my finger prints) on an iPhone and I'll pass on it.

What I do want, however, is an unlocked GSM smart phone. Ideally this phone would be quad-band, but a tri-band with both US frequencies is acceptable. A QWERTY keyboard is a must, and a compact form factor is critical. A decent web browser is needed, and I'll need to be able to have multiple email accounts, separately, on the phone. Oh, and I need to be able to synchronize my calendar and address book with the phone from my mac.

The first solution I came up with was the Nokia E70. The phone is very nice. It runs Symbian for the OS and is supported by iSync. It has a standard candy bar form factor and splits open to reveal a tactile QWERTY keyboard. It has a quality web browser and it can handle email exactly as I want it to. But it's not without its issues. First off, it's sluggish. Sometimes I wonder if I've hit a button yet. I find that pretty frustrating. Second, there are very few external buttons for shortcuts to things like the camera (which by the way is pretty poor, and very slow). Third and arguably most important, when I flip the phone open to use the QWERTY keyboard, my signal goes down instantly. It seems like the keyboard blocks part of the built-in antenna.

The fourth issue is really touchy. I mentioned it before - this is a Symbian smart phone. Aside from being a tad sluggish, Symbian is not that popular and not really well developed for. A lot of software is designed for Palm and for Windows Mobile, but not for Symbian. That being said, I have my general dislike of all things Windows and that makes Windows Mobile hard to swallow.

Not being easily satisfied, I'm now looking at the HTC S710. This phone runs Windows Mobile 6, which I believe is the most recent. It's got a really cool side-slide design to bring out a tactile QWERTY keyboard with keys that are large enough to be fumbled with a lot easier than the Nokia's. I have not yet had an opportunity to play with the software, but it looks promising. The kicker is, of course, that this is Windows Mobile and the only way to sync it with my mac will be to use the new version (not yet released) of The Missing Sync.

Fortunately for me, a friend has an HTC phone that I will be able to try out. I'll try to update as I try other things.

I used to have an unlocked Cingular somethingorother (a HTC candybar, windows mobile 5 phone). I liked it for the most part, but it was a little bulky in size.

Windows mobile is actually very slick, and I understand Windows mobile 6 is even better. I'd not avoid it just because of the MS tag :D