The first AT&T official phone was the Motorola Backflip. AT&T will sell it to you for $199 with a $99 mail-in-maybe-you’ll-get-refunded-sometime-next-year-rebate if you sign up for a 2 year contract. Perhaps a better bet is to buy it from Amazon without a contract for $339. Or with a contract for 1 cent.
The Backflip has a slower processor than the Nexus One (below), but it does have a fold around full QWERTY keyboard and nifty back-of-the-screen touch-pad so you don’t get grimy fingerprints on your nice 3.1 inch 320×480 pixel screen. Of course, mobile carriers are always slow to upgrade your Phone’s OS, so the Backflip is running Android version 1.5 now, upgradeable to 2.1 at some point in the future…
Also note that if you buy one flashed for AT&T, it is likely to have some features (such as the ability to load applications from anywhere) disabled. You can read my full review of the Motorola Backflip here.

The new phone on the AT&T block is the HTC Aria. This phone is smaller than the Backflip (and has no physical keyboard) with a faster processor, but otherwise the hardware specifications are almost identical. AT&T will charge you $129 with a rebate, but you can get it with a contract from Amazon for 1 cent! Or, you can purchase it without a contract for $339.

If you are willing to pay for the phone, you used to be able to buy an unlocked Nexus One from Google with the correct 3G radio for the high high price of $529. (Don’t forget to click the “AT&T” radio-button!). However, they have sold out of their final Nexus One, so if you want one you’ll have to hit E-Bay!

The Nexus one lacks a QWERTY keyboard, but with a 3.7 inch screen sporting 480×800 pixels, the on-screen keyboard can have more pixels dedicated to it than the Backflip’s entire screen. Did I mention it runs a 1Ghz Snapdragon processor? Your applications will run smooth and fast for 5 hours before the battery dies. Although this phone isn’t sold by AT&T, the software and hardware is officially supported by Google, meaning that upgrades to Android will probably roll out on this phone first. It’s running Android 2.1 right now, and over the air upgrades to 2.2 are on the way!

Now that we’ve gotten the two official and semi-official phones out of the way, lets talk about options for people who don’t mind buying a Windows Mobile phone and installing a custom Android operating system on it! These options are completely 100% not supported by AT&T or HTC (the phone hardware manufacturer), so they are not for the faint of heart. They are also only somewhat stable, do not support all phone hardware features, and in most cases run off of the SD card, so you can expect a serious performance hit.

HTC manufactures three phones for AT&T running Windows Mobile that can run (with varrying degrees of sucess) Android. I will refer to them by their HTC & Android on HTC wiki names: Kaiser, Raphael, and Rhodium. (a.k.a. AT&T Tilt, AT&T Fuse, and AT&T Tilt 2) Before you even think about running Android on these phones, you need to examine the “Port Status” table here, and note what features are NOT supported. Only the Tilt/Kaiser has most features supported, because it’s the oldest phone. The Fuze/Raphael phones are lacking support for the cameras, ambient light sensor, and some bluetooth, and the Tilt2/Rhodium is missing even more. In some cases certain things which you may take for granted (such as speakerphone support) just don’t work.

All three of these phones have a slide out QWERTY keyboard, charge via mini-USB (which is good!) and have proprietary audio jacks (which is bad). The Raphael is probably the easiest to put in your pocket, while the Rhodium has the best screen.

• Kaiser (AT&T Tilt) – Best supported by the Android port, but oldest phone. 400 Mhz processor, 2.8 inch 240 X 320 display, 190 grams
• Raphael (AT&T Fuze) 528 Mhz processor, 2.8 inch 480×640 screen, 165 grams Forum based install instructions and Youtube Demo Video.
• Rhodium (AT&T Tilt 2) 528 Mhz processor, 3.8 inches 480×800 screen, proprietary audio jack, 178 grams

Related posts:

1. HTC Aria on AT&T Review
2. Wifi Tether on the HTC Aria

Over the last 18 months, the battery capacity has reduced itself to 44% of the original value (This happens with LiIon cells as they age). My last full capacity ACPI reading is now  21060 mWh, and provides 1-2 hours of working time on my IBM X31 Thinkpad. In a few more months it will be time to replace the Li-Ion cells again. Luckly, a friend gave me an IBM T60 extended battery (containing 8 cells) that had failed. When I took it appart, it appeared that 6 of the cells worked fine, and two of the cells were dead (killing the entire battery). TaDa! 6 free replacement cells! 

Related posts:

1. Refilling laptop batteries!
2. Upgrading the miniPCI wireless card in a Thinkpad X31

This card works correctly, but I am able to get faster transfer times using a USB bluetooth adapter (from ellink). For example, transfering a 1.1MB file from my phone via the USB Ellink adaptor takes 27 seconds, while the same transfer takes 47 seconds using the 3com PCMCIA adapter. It is possible that this adapter is a Bluetooth 1.0 or 1.1 device as opposed to a 2.0 device.

Related posts:

1. Linux OBEX Push via bluetooth to the V3xx
2. MythTV to phone (.3gp) transcoder script and Bluetooth transfer

The Libra comes bundled with a USB Bluetooth dongle (that may contain 64MB of flash memory as a bonus, depending upon model), which you may need to use if your laptop does not already come with a Bluetooth adapter.

As soon as I paired the device with my laptop, the mouse functionality worked. When I moved the joystick my mouse would move, and the left and right click buttons worked as expected. Pushing the joystick in also generates a left-click event.
So far I do not have the two "option" buttons working yet, but they are supposed to be mappable to pageup/pagedown or left/right arrow keys, so they are technically keyboard events. I'm not sure if I have to configure my laptop to get them to work or if I need to boot into windows to configure the Libra to know what key sequence to send.
But, since my presentation tool only needs left/right mouse clicks, I'm not spending too much time on it.

How to pair: 

• To put the Libra N1 Presenter into Pairing mode (after you turn it on) press and hold the left mouse button, left option button, and the function button at the same time.A "hcitool scan" should find an entry such as xx:xx:xx:xx:xx:xx Presenter 829C8C, if you don't find it, it's likely that the presenter is not in "pairing" mode yet.
• Issue an hidd –search command while watching your /var/log/messages. You should see the presenter pair with your system. If you don't, you might try using the hidd –connect xx:xx:xx:xx:xx:xx where the xx's are replaced with what you found using the hcitool scan command.
• The default pin is 0000 if you are asked.

Related posts:

1. How to pair a Motorola HS850 bluetooth headset
2. Finding bluetooth link keys under Mandriva ( /var/lib/bluetooth )

obextool push movie.3gp <MY_BD_ADDRESS>

The transfer still failed without any warnings. I then used the sdptool to figure out what channel the obexpush service is on for my phone:

sdptool search OPUSH  <MY_BD_ADDRESS>

This replied with the answer of channel 8:

Inquiring …
Searching for OPUSH on <MY_BD_ADDRESS>…
Service Name: OBEX Object Push
Service Description: OBEX Object Push
Service Provider: /a/mobile/cl.gif
Service RecHandle: 0×10008

Service Class ID List:
  "OBEX Object Push" (0×1105)
Protocol Descriptor List:
  "L2CAP" (0×0100)
  "RFCOMM" (0×0003)
    Channel: 8
  "OBEX" (0×0008)
 

Then, I tried using the obextool and specifying the correct channel (Although it should already be able to correctly determine the channel by itself) and that worked correctly.

obextool push movie.3gp <MY_BD_ADDRESS> 8

Note: If you don't understand how to find your devices BD address, see this post.

The transfer was not terribly speedy, with the 203 MB (20329kb) movie taking almost exactly 15 minutes to transfer, or around 22KB/sec. It would be much quicker to pull the microSD (TransFlash) memory card from the phone and use a USB to TransFlash adapter (1-4MB/sec) to copy the file across.

Related posts:

1. MythTV to phone (.3gp) transcoder script and Bluetooth transfer
2. How to locate the Bluetooth DUN (Dial Up Networking) profile of a phone

Size & Feel

The V3XX is slightly longer and wider than previous RAZR (V3) models, but unless you hold it right up against another V3 for comparison nobody will notice.  I have the gold model (because that is all Amazon had in stock) but it also comes in the standard RAZR black. When you first pick it up, it feels a bit wide in the hand, but after a day or two of use you get completely used to it. The advantage of being slightly wider than most phones is that it is quite a bit thinner. This comes in very handy when you put it in a front (hip) pocket. I can very comfortably carry the V3xx around in my hip pocket, where other phones (such as the LG-CU500 and Motorola V330) were uncomfortably bulky.

One thing that bears mentioning is the thermal output of the phone. Yes, heat. This isn't noticeable under normal operation, but when you watch a video for more than a few minutes,  you can tell that the phone is using a good amount of power because the back of the case (behind the battery) starts to warm up. You can use the phone as a gentle hand warmer on cold days by leaving a video running. Now this doesn't compare to the bottom of my X31 laptop, and it certainly doesn't get hot enough to be worrying, but on a hot day it may make your hand a bit sweaty. I'm not sure if it's the video decoding or the radio receiving or a combination of the two, but you can tell that power is being used.

Battery Life

The V3xx has very good battery life if you just use it as a phone. However, when you start taking advantage of the advanced features (like Cingular Video, or Google Maps) that use both the radio and the (large, power hungry) screen the battery life goes from days to hours. I spent one morning downloading J2ME applications from getjar.com and playing with them to find some of the best, and after 4 hours of nearly continuous WAP downloads and running J2ME applications, my battery warning indicator started to chirp. 

3G Data / Videos / Music

Being able to download Cingular Videos on the 3G network is very nice! After buffering for five seconds, the videos essentially stream, playing all the way to the end without annoying pauses or drops. Cingular video does work with only the EDGE network, but I find that movies are much more likely to pause/buffer midway through when downloading via EDGE.  The 3G network also has a much lower latency (100ms vs 500ms for EDGE) so browsing the web on the included web browser (which is basically Opera Mini) is much snappier over 3G. At 3G data rates, Google Maps is truely interactive, and is almost able to keep the screen refreshed even during continuous scrolling.

The Phone plays MP3's from either internal memory or the TransFlash card. Unlike the LG-CU500, you cannot start the music player without opening the phone. (Once music is playing, you can use the external buttons to play/pause/advance the music player.)

Camera

The 1.3 Megapixel camera is located on the top of the flap, facing away from the user when the phone is open. The quality is comparable with other 1.3MP cell phone cameras. It is good enough for quick snapshots, and certainly much better than earlier camera-phones, but probably won't substitute for even a good 2.1MP digital camera. The only quirk is that the camera is mounted in "portrait" mode by default (which matches the 240×320 display), so if you want to take a landscape picture, you will have to physically rotate the phone. If you want to take a picture of yourself, you can activate the camera, and then close the flip. The external display will act as a viewfinder, and the "Smart" button on the side of the phone will snap the shutter. I have included a photo for you to judge for yourself:

SyncML support:

One of the two features that convinced me to choose this phone over the LG-CU500 was the built in SyncML client. This allows me to sync my address book, calendar, and tasks with a SyncML server such as zyb.com or (the one I use) mobical.net. I had a few problems importing things from my palm pilot, but after deleting a few repeating appointments I was finally able to get the SyncML client to do "fast" syncs with the syncML server and now everything is working great!

Bluetooth support:

The phone can be used as a modem by a computer or PDA via Bluetooth or over a USB cable. If you have a stereo bluetooth headset that supports the A2DP profile you can listen to music and videos over bluetooth in stereo. Even better, if you only have a mono bluetooth headset, the phone will still allow you to listen to videos or music over it! This was one of my biggest complaints about other phones I've tried, and I'm happy to report that Motorola has got it right! Even though my Motorola HS850 doesn't provide great audio quality, it's much preferably to carry the small single ear bluetooth headset to listen to audio from a The Daily Show video clip on the train that to use a full bluetooth headphone.

GUI/Usability:

The Motorola GUI is easy to use and very responsive. The phone is a multi-tasking champion, allowing you to listen to music and browse the web, run a java app, or browse your calendar/address book at the same time. Simply hit the "back" button multiple times when in the music player to get back to the home screen, or flip the lid closed and then open again, or hit the Cingular "Jack" key to browse the web. (When the music player is active, it does take over 3 of your 4 "home-screen" arrow shortcuts (left/right/down), so you might have to navigate via the regular menu to reach the shotcut items.)

The Annoying but fixable stuff:

Cingular has crippled the JVM so that non-signed applications (such as Google Maps) will prompt you for access to the internet every time they load a new piece of data, which basically makes them unusable. Also, the default V3xx from Cingular has it's IMAP4/POP3/SSL email client disabled. Both of these problems can be avoided by buying a non-branded V3XX direct from Motorola. Or, once you have a Cingular version, you can use special software to re-enable the features you would like, as reported here.

Cons:

• Does not include an industry standard 2.5mm headphone jack, so you must buy mini-usb versions, or perhaps a better choice, buy a bluetooth version.

• The GSM part of the phone is tri-band (missing GSM 900) so it will not work as well with T-Mobile (in the US) or in Asia/Australia. If you do not plan on using the phone with T-Mobile or in Australia, this shouldn't be a problem. Even if you do take the phone to Europe/Asia, it does have the 1800 band, so it is likely that it will get (GSM) coverage in most areas. Note that the 3G part of the phone is also only using a dual band chipset, so 3G isn't likely to work outside of the Americas. Seeing as how Cingular only has 3G rolled out in 12 or so cities right now, the fact that 3G doesn't work in Europe probably won't be a big issue.

Pros:

• Uses a standard Mini-USB (b) connection for data transfer and charging. This means that you can buy a standard cable to charge the phone from a computer, or transfer data.
• Transflash Card can be removed/changed without removing the battery (although you do have to remove the battery cover) and without a pair of tweezers (unlike the LG-cu500).
• 3G chipset is HSDPA 3.6 compatible (twice as fast as HSDPA 1.8). Although this doesn't really matter now, because Cingular has limited their network to 1.8, eventually it may come in useful, especially if you are paying for a data plan and use the phone as a modem.
• Voice Dialing support – Unlike many other Cingular phones, the Motorola includes voice dialing built into the phone. (Very nice when using with a bluetooth headset.)
• Built in SyncML client (and a Hidden IMAP/POP3/SSL email client that can be enabled with the right knowledge and tools.)

This phone is the one I choose for myself (After multiple days of using the LG-CU500 and the Blackjack, and having played with the Sync at a Cingular store), mostly due to the SyncML client, IMAP4/SSL email client, and ability to send all audio to a mono Bluetooth headset. The LG-CU500 came in a close second. the Blackjack had the advantage of having a qwerty keyboard, but I get almost all of the same "Smart" features by using the SyncML client, and a J2ME Gmail client (which is faster and easier to use than the built in IMAP client).

Related posts:

1. LG CU-500 Mobile Phone Review (Cingular)
2. Bad experiance with two 3G phones and Bluetooth Headsets

Size & Feel 

The CU500 is a small and light flip phone. About 50% thicker than the v3xx, it is essentially the same size as the A707. It is small enough to keep in a hip pocket, but you won't forget it's there. It feels good in your hand, and the buttons are well separated and easy to operate by feel.

Camera 

The 1.3MegaPixel camera is located in the center of the hinge flip, which allows it to rotate so that you can use it to capture images in front of you, or spin it around to focus on yourself. In Australia, where LG sells this phone as the TU500, this feature is used to enable video conferencing, but that is not supported on the Cingular network in the United States. The only way they could have made the built in swivel camera better is if it had a sensor to detect when you had flipped the camera around and automatically flipped the image right-side-up. (As it is, you have to select the "Reverse View" option from a menu.) I have included here two photos taken by the camera for you to judge image quality for yourself :         

3G Data / Videos / Music

Being able to download Cingular Videos on the 3G network is very nice! After buffering for five seconds, the videos essentially stream, playing all the way to the end without annoying pauses or drops. Music playback is easy to control with hot buttons on the front of the phone, and you can multi-task with music in the background while browsing the web, composing an SMS or playing a java game. (You can even play a java application while talking on the phone if you have a headset.)

The phone can be used as a modem to a computer or PDA via Bluetooth or over a USB cable. If you have a stereo bluetooth headset that supports the A2DP profile you can listen to music and videos over bluetooth. However, if you have an older style monophonic bluetooth headset, you can only use it to make and receive calls, and not listen to videos or audio. The Motorola v3xx will allow you to downsample the high quality stereo audio signal to a standard monophonic bluetooth headset if you do not have a stereo headset, which is a nice feature if you just want to listen to CNN on a train and don't want to carry (or buy!) a full bluetooth headphone.

GUI / Ease of Use 

Although the display (at 176×220) is slightly smaller than the A707 and the v3xx (which have a resolution of 240×320), it really doesn't affect video playback (the videos are 176×144 in any case) and the GUI does not feel cramped.  I found the controls to be very easy to use and I was able to find all the features I wanted. The dedicated volume, camera, and music buttons all work as you would expect. The boot-up process makes you wait (27 seconds), but once the phone is up and running the response on menus is snappy.

Pros:

• Standard 2.5mm headset jack which also works with stereo headphones.
• Swivel camera allows for front/back picture taking.
• Easy to hack with BitPim (Linux/Mac/Windows phone editing software) to fix Java, add your own Ringtones or wall-papers, etc.
• Quad-Band GSM means it will work anywhere in the world with no problems.

Cons:

• No Voice dial.
• Proprietary charging connector, must buy LG chargers.
• No SyncML support.
• No built in Email client (But can access Cingular Mail via WAP).
• Can not send music/video audio to mono bluetooth headsets.
• Not only is the TransFlash card slot behind the battery, but it's very difficult to remove a card once you put it in. (Of course, most people will just install the card once and forget it, but if you ever want to swap cards out you will have to remove your battery and have a pair of tweezers.)

I really liked the fact that this phone's filesystem could be edited using BitPim from Linux, but the lack of a SyncML client and the inability to downsample stereo sound to a mono bluetooth headset made me choose the v3xx over this phone.  If you don't care about SyncML, and will be using a wired stereo headset, or already own a stereo bluetooth headset, I think you will really like the LG CU 500.

Related posts:

1. Bad experiance with two 3G phones and Bluetooth Headsets
2. Review: Motorola RAZR V3xx

1. Close the boom to turn the unit off.
2. Hold down the call button until the blue light comes on.
3. While holding down the call button, swing the boom open.
4. (Now you can let go of the call button.)

The headset is now in pairing mode, and you can search for it using your phone. When it asks for a PIN, use 0000.

Related posts:

1. Pairing with a iOne Libra N1 bluetooth presenter
2. Bad experiance with two 3G phones and Bluetooth Headsets

The Samsung Blackjack is a nice piece of hardware. The screen is beautiful, it is well proportioned and fits well in my hand, the scroll-wheel makes it easy to select from menus, and it's thin enough to be carried in a hip pocket despite the factthat it's wider than most phones. The camera is adequate for a cell phone, and the speaker is plenty loud. The phone actually has two speakers,one in the ear-piece, and one on the back that is used to play audio from everything that isn't a phone call (movies, mp3, speaker-phone). The only downside to this is that people behind your phone get better (and louder) sounds than you do, which may be good for sharing music, but isn't as appreciated when you're watching a movie in public. As with every other 3G device I've played with (namely the LG CU500) a standard Bluetooth headset works for call audio only, and will NOT play mono-only sound from the movie/mp3 player. See my rant on 3G phones and why I hate this.

For those people who swap their microSD cards a lot, it's not hidden behind the battery. The matte black plastic hides fingerprints, but shows hand sweat. The built in mini-QWERTY keyboard is "chicklet" style and good for thumb typing, but the built in number pad (for dialing) is difficult to use. Even though Samsung made the number keys a slightly different color than the rest of the letter keys, my eyes kept sliding off of them and I had to really concentrate when dialing numbers. 

Overall, the Blackjack is small enough to be treated like a true  phone, while having most of the advantages of a PDA/SmartPhone. Now, on to the software. It's running Windows Mobile 5.0 with the Messaging and Security feature pack. (That means it can do SSL encrypted IMAP4 email.) This was my first experience with Windows Mobile (having skipped versions 1-4, if they even existed). Overall I wasn't terribly impressed, but the software mostly works and doesn't have any more annoyances than other phone software that I've used (Symbian, Motorola's custom OS on the V330, etc).  The web browser worked well, and the only annoyance I ran into with Java applications is that I can't find a way to allow Google Maps total access to the network, so every time I zoom or scroll I have to approve it's network traffic again. The Blackjack doesn't support the Dial-Up Networking profile (act as a modem) over bluetooth, but it does server as a network access point, so the procedure for connecting to it from a laptop is a little bit different from most phones, but the internet access works well if you know the secret.

If you use Outlook and can get the phone to sync with it, I think it would make a very good "remote desktop" for viewing your outlook email, TODO lists, and appointments. But it's no Palm. Entering appointments isn't terribly quick or easy, and it everywhere you go in the OS you find yourself having to do one or two more clicks to get what you want done that you should have to. As a view-port into your desktop based Outlook world, it'll work fine, but if you want a stand-alone PDA, go get a Treo. (I was able to borrow this phone because the original owner, who had owned a Treo previously,  disliked it enough to go and pay $600 for a Treo 650. Somebody else who borrowed it and who had never used a Palm device loves it.)

One thing that annoys my CS bits is the fact that when you start a new application, it just keeps running. Most applications don't have an exit button. When you are done, you switch away from the application by hitting the "Home" button (analogous to the Windows Start button) and go do something else. Unlike a Palm, where backgrounded applications are actually swapped out, the applications just keep running. This is great if you want to play music in the background while looking up an appointment, but annoying if you don't want the audio from a CNN video playing while you are trying to look up a contact to call. I guess I just have to learn to hit the pause button before switching away from the movie player.

Of course, having all of these applications running at once can use up all of your memory, which is apparently a common enough problem for Microsoft to put the answer to it on their Windows Mobile FAQ. (Namely, go to the Task Manager and kill off all the applications. It is interesting to note that the Task manager application will let you resume a single task, but it has no menu option to kill or stop a single task, instead you have to stop all tasks, and then re-start the ones you wanted to keep.)
 

Related posts:

1. Bad experiance with two 3G phones and Bluetooth Headsets
2. Fixing Java in the Razr V3xx (Cingular)

The thing that annoys me is that when I have a standard Bluetoothheadset (such as the Motorola HS850) paired and connected to the phones I can only use it for call audio! Both phones don't send a mono sound signal out to the headset, even though they only have a mono speaker on the phone! Instead, they insist on blasting the audio from whatever video I'm watching out of their speakers, to annoy everybody else around me.  The Blackjack is even so annoying that when I'm dialing a call it sends DTMF tones out the speaker, (again, to annoy anybody around me) and only switches to the Bluetooth headset when the call is established.

The Nokia 9500 (which, to be fair, doesn't support stereo) at least did things right. When a Bluetooth headset was attached, ALL AUDIO went out to the Bluetooth headset. This included beeps generated by moving around the menus, game audio, music player audio, video audio, and yes, call audio.

Yes, I realize that stereo is better than mono and I should go out and pay big bucks for a pair of Bluetooth headphones if I really want to experience the beauty of stereo sound, but why couldn't they support a
mono sound export when the user doesn't have an A2DP supporting Bluetooth device?  If anybody knows of a 3G phone that does bluetooth audio to mono (non-A2DP) headsets, please let me know…

Update: My new Motorola Razr V3xx phone works the way you'd expect! If you have a sterio A2DP headset, it works, but if you just have a mono headset, it downsamples the audio and exports it to the plain old headset profile device! This is one of the main features that made me choose the V3xx over the LG CU-500. Plus, it exports ALL phone audio (including such things as the output of java applications), not just the media player audio. Also, a reader reports that the Motorola Q also offers this feature. I guess the general answer is that Motorola got this feature "right" (perhaps their new Linux/Java base operating system made it easy for them?).

Related posts:

1. LG CU-500 Mobile Phone Review (Cingular)
2. How to pair a Motorola HS850 bluetooth headset