So, for anyone who’s watching, I’ve settled on the Sony Ericsson T610 which you can currently get from Amazon “for free” , with a T-Mobile plan. It should be here next week.

Friends warned against Sprint as having poor service and pointed to Verizon as one of the best. I dropped by the Verizon store and was annoyed that they didn’t have any working devices — just the plastic fakes that they have on display. The Kyocera 7135, which was highly praised by a friend who has one, did look attractive (full Palm PDA plus phone) and it wasn’t as bulky as I’d been led to believe. But if I couldn’t work with it before buying, I wasn’t about to drop $500 and commit to two years of service. ($650 with only a one-year contract.)

Meanwhile, Colin had pointed me to the Amazon deal, which looked pretty good, so I stopped by a T-Mobile store, and they did let me play with the T610 (and a Pocket PC/phone, can’t remember the model.) The T610 seemed decent, and I liked the T-Mobile plans — the $19.95 “add-on” for unlimited internet sounded cheaper than what I heard from Verizon, and T-Mobile doesn’t even have two-year plans. To get the “free” price, I had to buy it from Amazon ($100 off sale price plus $100 mail-in rebate) and sign up for a $40/month plan (to get another $100 rebate from T-Mobile). The $40 is for voice only; I asked if $30 voice + $20 internet would qualify and they said no. I don’t really need the bigger voice package, but I think once I cash the rebate check, I’m legitimately allowed to downgrade the voice plan if I choose to.

In the end, I’ve done without a PDA for several years, and I figure that the price point of PDA phones will be dropping in the next couple of years. Also, from scouting around, it sounds like lots of people churn through phones pretty quickly, since service providers frequently use new phones as loyalty incentives — so if I get a year or two of use out of this one, then I can regroup and see if I still want PDA-ish features.

So thanks to Sean and Tony for comments on the blog, and Mike and Mike for email feedback, and of course, Colin for the pointer to the Amazon deal and links to PhoneScoop.com for product reviews and a very cool “phone finder” tool.