Beginners will love the Jack's easy interface, bevy of features, and reasonable price.

Easy-to-navigate; Full array of email, text and IM options; excellent music and video playback options; WiFi; 3.2 MP camera

Dull style; not enough call volume; microSD card slot in battery compartment; variety of minor technical issues

A brilliant e-ink keyboard shines as an overwhelming high point on an otherwise forgettable phone.

E Ink keyboard; dual-hinge clamshell design; large, bright 2.6-inch screen; long talk time and battery life

Clunky Web browser; no threaded messaging; soft focus photos, poor QCIF videos; low ringtone volume

A gorgeous screen and giant keyboard might help buyers overlook Samsung

Gorgeous OLED display; sensitive capacitive touch screen; well-built, attractive form factor; solid QWERTY keyboard

Hard-to-jab unlock button; no Wi-Fi; unintuitive Windows-Mobile-based interface

A minor facelift moves the Instinct a notch forward while others proceed by leaps and bounds.

Easy-to-use touchscreen interface and OS; excellent music and video player; fast EV-DO Web access; visual voicemail

No real improvements over original Instinct; below average camera; slow-to-load music player; hard-to-read Web text; less talk time battery life than original

Even for $30, Sanyo's ultra-budget QWERTY model just doesn't stack up to other budget competitors.

Inexpensive QWERTY messaging phone; lightweight; easy-to-read screen; dedicated emoticon menu button

Hard to see number key and punctuation icons; no threaded messaging; slow Web connections; no music player

Even though the sleek and beautiful touch-screen Palm Treo Pro is essentially a minor update of the 800W, its alluring external aesthetic make it feel like a whole new phone. Like the...

Beautiful aesthetics ; Zippy EV-DO Rev. A connections ; great voice quality ; quality video playback ; 3.5mm stereo headphone jack

Not upgradeable to Windows Mobile 6.5 ; poor camera and video ; poor battery life ; tightly-packed QWERTY keypad ; no direct access keys for camera or music playback

LG consistently produces some of the best-sounding, most intuitively ergonomic and aesthetically pleasing cell phones available. But for some reason, the company has failed to bring...

Excellent sound quality ; wide four-row QWERTY keyboard ; quality LCD screen ; full SMS, email and IM functions ; threaded text messaging ; bluetooth 2.1

No video recording ; oddly-placed period and shift keys ; fuzzy pictures ; no EV-DO connectivity ; slow to initialize MP3 player ; overly quiet ringers

A thin, sturdy shell and solid camera help the i9 overcome an embarrassingly weak Web browser.

Thin design; slick icon setup; easy to use; good camera

Lack of included peripherals; clunky Internet browser

As long as you don't plan on doing much surfing, the Intrigue makes a solid and attractive phone.

Nice multimedia functionality; crisp screen

No out-of-the-box music transferring; awkward web input

Despite a rather conservative past, RIM has been advancing by leaps and bounds in the last six months or so. The Storm made a splash as the first touch-screen BlackBerry, the Pearl...

Ultra-sharp screen ; lightweight, compact ; quick, intuitive interface ; 3.2-megapixel camera ; decent accessories ; respectable media player

Slow EDGE Internet ; browser sometimes produces graphic glitches