I ALWAYS believe in going big on these sort of things especially since the 2 year contract price on phones is a one time deal. But before I drop $300 on a Blackberry I'll never fully use, what utility have you guys gotten out of high end PDA phones? I know you can't use them aboard ship but what about on shore?
I've got a Treo 650 with Cingular (now AT&T), and before that I had a Kyocera 7135. First some things to consider:
1. No, you can't use the phone portion of the smartphone on ship - but you can use the PDA function. I brought mine with me on both deployments and no one batted an eye (mainly because I wasn't holding it up to my ear and yakking).
2. Even then, using the phone aboard ship is up to the Capt. When I was on the big deck, big no-no (unless we were in port). On the little deck, you could use it during lunchtime and all the time while in port. Of course, it doesn't work on a TransLant.
You've basically got to figure out which PDA OS you want to use. AT&T luckily offers all of them: BB, Palm, and WM. I'm a Palm guy, considering the jump to WM but I'm holding out that the Centro (on Sprint) makes it to AT&T in the next year or so. Important to note that WM comes in two flavors - Smartphone edition and Pocket PC edition. What's the big deal? You can view, but not edit MS Office documents on the Smartphone edition, but can edit them on the Pocket PC edition. The Blackjack and 3125 has the Smartphone edition, and the 8125, 8525, Tilt & Treo 750 has the Pocket PC edition. WM 6.0 is supposed to come out for AT&T soon as well.
My suggestion would be two-fold:
1. Go to an AT&T store that doesn't have mock-ups, and has real-live operating phones and play with the OS to figure out which one you like.
2. Buy that phone off of eBay unlocked. You can sign up for AT&T's international roaming but it is PRICEY. If you pull into port, you can buy a pre-paid SIM and it's cheaper. How pricey is pricey? I didn't have an unlocked phone, and used the international roaming and ended up with a $2000 cell phone bill one month. If you decide to get it through AT&T (cheaper or what have you), search on the internet how to unlock it. Unlocking it is key.
The general consensus is that if you want simple, yet effective PIM operation go with Palm. If you want push email, go with BB. If you want MS Active Sync with your exchange server, go with a WM device. Me personally, I'm going to stick with Palm because there's a metric shit-ton of third party programs available for it (anything you think of really). As a quick sample of what I can do with my Palm Treo 650 (which is the predecessor to the 680 that AT&T offers now):
Push email with Gmail/AOL (any IMAP provider) with Chattermail.
Over the air Sync with Google Calendar.
Flight Status information.
Google Maps.
Weather (to include radar pics).
Metro Maps of Washington, DC.
Full editing/creating of MS Office documents.
Tether to my computer and use it as a wireless modem.
Streaming Internet Radio.
Full Dictionary/Thesaurus
Scientific Calculator
Remote destruction of my data if I lose it with Warden.
Sodoku, Chess, Bejewled, etc...
Currency converter.
Automatic forwarding of my cell phone to my home phone when I plug it in.
The list is endless what you CAN do with it, the above is what I actually do on an almost daily basis. You can PM me if you want to ask more questions, and
www.treocentral.com (for Treos),
www.wmexperts.com (for WM devices),
www.crackberry.com (for BB), and
www.phonedifferent.com (for iPhone) have a crap load of information on their respective devices. They share the same user base, so if you join one - you have the same permissions on all the others.
