Motorola MPX220

So I bought a Motorola MPX220.  Here's my review: it rocks!

I won't bother linking to any of the zillion places you can buy it, but it's available either thru Cingular (my carrier) or through Amazon or through a billion other places (if you don't already use Froogle and Pricegrabber you really should).

I also am not going to bother making a serious review, since there are many many reviews online.  I think the most detailed I found to date is here on Smartphonethoughts.

What I will do is highlight what I think are it's strengths and weaknesses (no more than 5 each to keep this one short)

Strengths

• The screen.  It's awesome, beautiful, and high res.
• Contacts.  They sync perfectly with outlook and integrate very well with apps on the phone.  I especially like the manner in which you select contacts.  If you know T9, Motorola has their own version of this technology, except when you are searching for a contact, you start hitting letters and names, parts of names, etc. are all displayed in a list.  As you keep hitting more letters, the list gets whittled down to the remaining possibilities.  Example: Hitting 7 (pqrs), 2 (abc), 8 (tuv) matches both Paul and Raul.
• Voice Recognition.  There is no training.  It will recognize names (first or last) in your contacts without any special training.  It's not 100%, but it works great and once you get used to it (speak slowly, pause between word/names) and also it's better to use the full name of the contact, it works wonderfully in the car!
• Doom.  'Nuff said.
• MP3 player.  1GB miniSD cards just came out and are rumored to work with the '220.  The sound quality is fantastic. I highly recommend getting the motorola headphones/headset so far I have only found them at BestBuy.
• Home screen (yeah it's 6, but I had to sneak this in).  It's fully customizable using an XML file which defines the graphics and colors for an entire scheme.  On the home screen, status indicators such as date, time, number of messages, MRU Application List, all are implemented via customizable (via the XML file) plugins, and app developers can write whatever they want (can you say RSS?).  This site has some kickass home screens.

Weaknesses

• Bluetooth is difficult to set up for ActiveSync.
• Power/USB connectors are proprietary.
• Syncing mail can only be scheduled 15 min/30 min/1 hour etc.  It'd be better if I could schedule more frequent intervals during the day, and less at night (syncing sucks battery life big time)
• Doesn't come with a synchronize application for Outlook Notes.  Fortunately there is a great one here but it costs $12.95.
• Camera sux.  But I never wanted one anyway.