Samsung SCH-i730

Very pleased, after 1 year of use!!! I have home business with Reliv, sync 3000+ contacts, I use the Excel and Word on the phone which is very handy. I use it as an MP3 player during my workouts and take notes on it during meetings, the keyboard works great for me, average size hands. While I am walking around I take voice notes on the recorder. I have several games that look amazing on the screen.

I love the fact that it comes with the Microsoft programs (word, excel) plus a great file viewer that is awesome for zooming and moving around documents on the smaller screen. Very durable, dropped several times and still works well. Very reliable, I maybe have to do a reset once a month, if that (where my prior phone, the Samsung i600 I had to reset almost every day).

The cradle is great, especially since you can charge the spare battery and the phone at the same time. And the extended battery is included is another big cost saver. The battery life using the standard batter is great for phone use, I usually get 2-4 hours of solid talk time. Wi-Fi does drain the battery faster, but then I would just throw the extended battery on there and lasts as long as I need it.

I got the phone for $450 in July 2005 (after rebates), which I thought was a great value considering the included software, extended battery, and accessories. I would have spend more than that with most any other smartphone and then buying seperately the additional software that is not included on other phones and extended battery.

Wishes:
1. CAMERA!!!! (would like to see 3Meg picels)
2. thinner would be great (it is a little thick)
3. lighter (it is a little heavy)
4. non-volatile system memory (I had to reload the phone after I was unknowingly out of range hiking for a few hours while it searched in roaming mode till it went dead, it only took me 20 minutes to reload though)
5. Windoews Mobile 5.0 and A2DP bluetooth mode
6. the lock switch on the side is NOT accessible when the phone is in the cradle, I would like this accessible.

I honestly can say that this is one of the most amazing gadgets that i have ever owned. I dont care for verizon's lack of customer serice, however if you need a pda with internet connecion for any reason you cannot beat this... period!!! It is stable, and easy to use. I can install a wide variety of programs on this phone, such as pocket pc anywhere, and even a remote viewer for our video security system. None of my associates can believe i can watch my stores remotely from my phone. This phone ROCKS!!!!!!!!!!

I have both the Audiovox 6600 and the Samsung i730.
Anyone not using this for business needs can probably afford to invent, patent and produce a better product w/o using debt ;). The i730 comes with Pocket Outlook, which integrates seamlessly with Exchange 2003 so you don't have to keep your corporate email, contacts etc cached on a PUBLIC (but secure) web server (wireless sync is also a pain at times and you must leave Outlook running on a PC (with your login active) in your network). Apani offers a Cisco VPN client that works quite well with Ciscos 3000 series VPN concentrators.
You can reassign any button on the device to do various things. The i730 does not include a 12v adapter, but does come with both a normal sized and an extended battery which IMO is awesome. This thing holds a charge as well as most cell phones I have used, and the speakerphone (2 speakers on the back) is much more audible than the 6600 or most others I have used. You can also tell the phone to dial a #, or contact name. Hell, you can tell the phone to open IE via voice command if you want. The stylus is nice as it telescopes out to 1.7 x's it's length. Programming (in .NET at least) is a breeze. I have already integrated use of the phone API and a signature capture form into one of our apps (which saves the signature to a sql DB via VPN). For those times when you simply aren't within coverage, there's always SQL CE which will cache DB entries until a connection is avail. As for comparing this device to others such as Palm based devices or blackberries I will just say this:
Palm recently announced that they would start offering Windows Mobile on their devices.... I do not see others saying they will port Palm OS or BB to their devices. Let the numbers (which are driven by demand)speak for themselves.
Having the other Office apps doesn't hurt, although on such a small screen (any smartphone) Word is much more useful than Excel. I have also used the SD slot with 512 M card. One thing I wish for is the phone manuf.'s and MS to allow you to reallocate some of the memory on these cards to system memory, as the i730 is very lacking in this area (Memory).
In the signature capture screen, the Samsung's screen performs very very (did I say very?) very well (After several drops and more than 1 rainstorm). What I write is exactly what shows up on the screen. I have not tried it on the 6600 yet. I have dropped this thing on the asphalt about 8 times and have the scratches & pits to prove it, I have used it in the rain (not recommended but had to see how it would handle it for our outside workforce), it has, on and off, been exposed to sub freezing weather and it just keeps working. Overall, I am very pleased with this device.
If you NEED access to your email & contact info at any time or if you need to deploy a mobile workforce with
applications connected to your network (on and offline modes) AND those apps can be created for a smaller screen then I highly suggest this device as it is, when purchased in bulk, a 3rd of the cost of a laptop(Not to mention the development costs are on average less than half when dealing with .NET) (Verizon has loaners they will give you to beta, complete with data enabled. They also offer bulk discounts which please the eye and the budget.)
If you are just looking for the latest & greatest to keep up with the Jones's next door, KEEP YOUR REGULAR CELLPHONE as it is MUCH easier to use as a mere cellphone.