Went shopping today after seeing the special CompUSA is running on the new Motorola phone that’s running Microsoft‘s SmartPhone software. They’re offering it for $299, with a $50 rebate, plus another $50 rebate if you turn in an old phone, with an SD card of music, a mail in offer for some Office document viewers and a Jabra EasySpeak Bluetooth headset. After the rebates and net worth of the Jabra set, I think the phone ends up being $20. What’s it like? Pretty freakin’ good actually and I’m a bit surprised by that.

First off, AT&T‘s GSM coverage in CT has kicked the shit outta T-Mobile‘s GSM coverage, which is sorta sad because T-Mo started the whole thing in the US. Cingular customers will roam onto T-Mo’s network if their own network isn’t in a local area, so they have at least the same coverage as T-Mo. AT&T built all their own network, before rolling it out this past February, and their coverage is impressive. Very impressive. Their plan isn’t bad, either. I stepped down a notch in service [to save some cash – joke, given that I bought a new phone, but every lil bit helps] but at the same price point I would only lose 50 minutes a month. Thankfully, my T-Mo contract is up in exactly 30 days, so yay for me. They also tell me that number mobility will go into effect during the last week in November, so changing numbers should never again be a problem, unless I move.

Ordinarily, I wouldn’t even care about the service, but unless you shell out $550 for an unlocked MPx200 you have to get this phone from AT&T – it’s not available via any other carriers at this time and I don’t know when or if it will be. So it works out to be important enough to mention. Beyond that, how’s the hardware? Pretty good. A little wider than my Samsung S105 but not enough to notice… Nice change of pace is the “back” and “home” buttons that are on the handset physically – no more of this “multi-tasking” soft key crap that happens on a lot of phones… they are a nice edition.

The screen is killer. No other way to say it. The SD card is tucked into the side so you won’t notice it unless you need it. The rocker switch is typical Pocket PC design, something that I see on a lot of Sony devices. The USB sync cable will not only allow data transfers but it also charges the phone – a traveler’s dream! A bit of a downer is the “USB-cover” cap that they put in, a la Samsung: easy to lose, if you aren’t anal about it. They also give you a mono-earpiece, a stereo-earpiece, cradle, charger and a USB cable.

Software-wise, it looks like a mostly standard install of SmartPhone 2002. I refuse to sign up for mMode, after a lifetime of wireless services at the last job, so a large part of the system will be lost on me, but the Contacts, Calendar, and Tasks alone make an argument for Pocket PC replacement. The fact that I can pop in an SD card with MP3’s on it adds to this. [It is not a contender for iPod replacement, however! I keep some music on the PPC in the event that the iPod runs outta juice on the road.] They also give you ActiveSync on a CD that I haven’t installed yet, but I need to look at it – according to the documentation they give you that cool Lemonade game as a bonus.

And then there’s the sync’ing itself… I’ve always told Steve that I didn’t want to put all of my PPC/PC contacts onto a phone because I have phone specific contacts that I need on the mobile and non-phone related contacts on the PPC/PC. I’ve also always told anyone that would listen that I hated a stupid feature of ActiveSync that usually made people lose information. See, ActiveSync says “Sync only these types of items” based off an item’s Category. If you have Business, Personal, and Mobile type contacts and told ActiveSync to sync only Business is would remove anything that wasn’t Business, meaning that it would delete the other sets of items… I can bitch no more.

I don’t know if it’s the new version of ActiveSync or the new version of Outlook but suddenly I can selectively sync certain groups: Business and Personal go to the PPC, Mobile goes to the SmartPhone, and the PC has all three groups – this was not possible before now! So now the phone has my calendar and my contacts and could have my tasks. What else do I use the PPC for? Um, that’s it, I think! The rest of the phone is standard phone stuff, with an added bonus: a SIM content manager which is better than anything I’ve seen on most phones. Of course, the phone wants you to import the SIM based contacts to the phone’s memory, and sync’ing won’t work unless you do this, but it will show the SIM’s contents in the Contacts list even if you don’t. Nokia and Sony Ericsson should take note of this! They also address the single most annoying thing that happens when changing between manufacturers: it has a “Vibrate, then Ring” mode and a “Vibrate and Ring” mode – this is awsome.

The only thing left to figure out is whether I want to sell off the Jabra Bluetooth headset or use it with this phone. The only two missing featues on the MPx200 are an integrated camera and Bluetooth; the Jabra uses an adapter.