At first I thought the camera was something I’d never use. But one of my guys has the equivalent Spring phone (an Audiovox, I think). When one of us is stumped with a problem, we take pictures of screens and MMS to each other. Unbelievably handy!

I’ve had the phone for 3 weeks and I keep finding more and more features, tricks, etc. For example, the other day, I was stuck in traffic, looking at an email quote from a supplier. I had a question about the quote. Without thinking, and without closing the email, I pushed the phone button and was about to go to Contacts. But, voila, the phone had already put the supplier’s number in the dialer.

The voice dialing is very good. And the ability to scratch in print or handwriting in every application and have it transcribed is extremely useful for people on the go.

I can’t say enough good about the phone. The only negative, and it’s a Windows Mobile negative I think, is that when you “close” an app, it doesn’t really close. Every now and then I either have to soft reset the phone or go to settings/memory/running apps and close them. Small price to pay for all the positives!

One think I’m curious about. I saw in Sanjay’s post that HTC is working on a UMTS version of the phone. When I bought this one, Cingular told me they were upgrading to UMTS here in St. Thomas sometime in the next year, and that this phone would work with UMTS. Was I misled?

Other than that, this device works great as phone — decent voice quality, very loud speakerphone, great address book and voice dialling. As a PDA it really is the best out there. I guess the only one better than this might be the Verizon XV6700 (same thing but with a faster Intel processor — better support for Skype) but I prefer GSM for my travels to Asia where I can by cheap prepaid cards instead of paying roaming charges.

I already added the 2GB miniSD card. I use direct transfer to card using a card reader rather than using the slower sync for copying my music to the card.

Now, the only thing I need to add to this is a bluetooth GPS receiver and navigation/map software. But I know this feeling won’t last. I hear that HTC — the maker of this phone — has already come out with a UMTS version — much faster than EDGE and even a little faster than EVDO.

So far, I like it, especially when using it with a Bluetooth headset.