Like the Razr before it, the Motorola Q clearly aims to make a fashion–and technophile–statement. Slim and stylish, this silver-hued PDA/phone is just 11.5mm thick–thinner than the Razr, and significantly more compact than competing smart phones from HP, Palm, Research in Motion, and T-Mobile,. Unfortunately, the unit lacks some of the features found on the competition, such as a selection of office productivity apps.

The Motorola Q certainly knows how to make an impression. Ever since its introduction almost a year ago, this smart phone has generated a lot of buzz for its ultrathin form factor. Of course, Motorola generated a lot of the hype itself by touting the Q as the “thinnest QWERTY device in the world.” And now after a number of delays, the Q finally is here, and thankfully, it delivers in performance and style. It offers good call quality, an outstanding multimedia experience, and the tools to keep business users productive on the go, such as Windows Mobile 5 Smartphone Edition, EV-DO, and e-mail support. For the ultimate road warriors who need full functionality for editing documents from the road, however, they may want to opt for a Windows Mobile Pocket PC phone, such as the Palm Treo 700w.

By now everyone knows one of the key differentiating factors of the Motorola Q is its size. The highlight is the .45″ thickness, something that’s perhaps hard to appreciate unless you’ve spent time with other smartphone devices. By way of comparison, that’s almost exactly half the thickness of the Treo 700 family. The Q is also a little shorter than the Treo, but loses out in the waistline, coming in at .2″ wider. The other key number is weight; the Q is a full two ounces lighter, coming in 4.1 ounces. Of course, some of these size benefits translate directly into weaknesses as the balancing act plays out; we’ll get into that more in further sections.

The new Treo 600 Communicator phone is probably what many Palm followers have been waiting for. A next generation Palm based phone running Palm OS 5. There are currently two different version of the Treo 600; a Quad-band GSM model that supports 850/900/1800/1900 Mhz bands, and a CDMA version. At this moment, Cingular in the USA, Orange across most of EU, and the newly announced TreoStore are the only outlets or carriers for the GSM model.

The Treo 600 has a bright color display, thumb keyboard, SD slot and an integrated VGA digital camera. It runs Palm OS 5.2.1H on a 144 MHz ARM processor. The features and processor make it one of the most powerful and feature-rich Palm OS smartphone currently on the market. While smartphones generally lag behind their PDA-only counterparts, the Treo 600 keeps up and won’t force you to compromise on many PDA features.

The Treo 600 is the evolution of Handspring products in the mobile area. It all started with the Handspring Visorphone, made by Option. I used the Handspring Visorphone with an old Visor Prism a few years ago. The product is no longer available from Handspring but can be found at retail stores and auction sites. It clips onto the back of a Visor handheld using Handspring’s proprietary Springboard technology, and adds GSM capabilities and integration with the Palm OS software. It’s recharged directly from the PDA while in the cradle. It worked well, but it was a bulky solution. This and not having GPRS, plus the fact that one looked silly while talking into a PDA the size of your hand, made me move to another mobile phone.

The first time you pick up the Motorola Droid ($200 with a two-year contract from Verizon; price as of 10/28/09), you’ll notice its solid feel and heft–there’s a lot going on behind the crisp, 3.7-inch touchscreen. Making good use of Android 2.0′s new features, the Droid is a powerful Web surfing and communications tool that has a chance of living up to its hype. The Droid’s biggest flaw, however, is in its hardware design: The keyboard is shallow and flat, which can make typing uncomfortable.

At 0.54 inch thick, the Droid is slightly beefier than the 0.48-inch-thick iPhone 3GS, but it still has room for a 40-key, slide-out QWERTY keypad. At just under 6 ounces, it’s about an ounce heftier than the iPhone 3GS. When closed, the 4.56-by-2.36-inch Droid is almost the same size as the 4.5-by-2.4-inch iPhone 3GS.

The slide out QWERTY keyboard is nice to have but not necessary in my opinion. The sliding mechanism is also solid but may ware out quickly over time. There is a nice click when you slide it open or close. There are a few things I don’t like about the keyboard like the keys are all flat and it just doesn’t feel right to type on it. There is also a D-Pad on the right of the keyboard but it’s not placed correctly. I wouldn’t get rid of the D-Pad because it comes in handy when you are in Recovery mode to flash a Custom ROM. What are custom ROM’s you say? We will get to that a little later. I am by no means fast when it comes to typing on a phone (even on the Blackberry), but I was even slower when using the physical keyboard. I personally prefer the virtual keyboard over the slide out one. The physical keyboard is just extra weight in my opinion for the Droid but I guess it’s one of the reasons the Droid is so popular.

The front of the device has the 3.7″ WVGA LCD with the speaker right above it. There are the four capacitive touch buttons right below the screen for the Back, Menu, Home and Search functions. What may confuse some people is that some Android device have these same buttons in different order (they seriously need to standardize on the order). The top part of the device ends there but you can see the bottom part with a small hole for the microphone and a Verizon logo (personally I think that’s a waste of valuable space).

The Bold 9700 and one of BlackBerry’s most petite handsets, the  Curve 8900, look and feel practically as if they were stamped from the same die. Both measure exactly 4.29 inches tall and 2.36 inches wide, with the Bold packing just a smidge of extra flab on the belly for a thickness of 0.56 inches and weight of 4.3 ounces with battery. Make no mistake: the extra decimals can’t do much to diminish the superbly pocketable size and weight of the new Bold, which sidles up right next to the very similar Curve 8900 as one of the most portable smartphones we’ve ever tested.

The physical keyboard, one of RIM’s strongest features in most of its handsets, is maximized on space and layout. It might look a bit cramped at first but it’s just enough and comfortable for two-fingered typing. RIM shaped the individual keys with a chiseled edge, half of which faces the left and the other half facing the right. This is actually a clever and practical move — your thumbs get some sort of traction over the keys and helps prevent from slipping and hitting the wrong keys.

Again, RIM has fully transitioned it’s old and problematic trackball and replaced it with a touch-sensitive trackpad. This is probably the most welcomed change made on BlackBerry handhelds lately and it does seem to perform well.

Putting aside the fact that I’m terribly spoiled working on sizable slide-out QWERTY keypads like those of Nokia N900, Nokia N97 Mini or Samsung OmniaPRO B7610 and keeping in mind that people who get a Blackberry are actually fans of its candybar-style thumb QWERTY keypad, I’d say that BB Bold 9700′s keyboard is one of the best ones I’ve used on any device in this category. The fretted keys, which are slightly raised in the middle, make typing not only fast but more importantly, accurate.

The display on the Bold 9700 matches the Curve 8900 exactly for brightness, resolution and color, which is to say, it’s amazing. Granted, at 2.44 inches across, it won’t run beside full touchscreen phones, but half-VGA brightness crammed into such a tiny area produces a tack-sharp display that makes even the tiniest text and details look crisp. A powerful backlight produces all the punch you need to read under all conditions, without washing out the deep blacks and vibrant colors.

Samsung’s first bada phone – the Samsung Wave S8500 – is finally here. A few months ago we reviewed a prototype unit, which left us with rather high expectations for the final product. Now that it’s here, we are ready to see what Samsung’s latest and greatest creation has to offer. Being a full-featured mobile platform however, bada will inevitably face some pretty strong competition in the form of BlackBerry, webOS, Android and iPhone OS.

In terms of hardware, there’s plenty to like about the Wave S8500. Measuring a slender 10.9mm thick, the fascia is taken up by a 3.3-inch WVGA Super AMOLED display, brighter than regular AMOLED, while there’s a 5-megapixel camera with LED flash and autofocus, 720p HD video recording, WiFi b/g/n and Bluetooth 3.0. Otherwise it’s the usual mixture of dualband (900/2100MHz) HSPA, quadband GSM/EDGE, a microSD card slot (augmenting 2GB or 8GB of internal storage, SKU depending), A-GPS and a 3.5mm headphone socket. Keeping things running is Samsung’s own 1GHz Hummingbird processor, and the whole thing feels high-quality with a metallic chassis that’s certainly more smartphone than it is feature-phone.

Being the first of a kind has its implications. Some may be willing to forgive a few flaws but a brand new OS needs a flagship capable of facing up to the competition. The S8500 Wave fits the bill. Trademark Samsung exterior and premium build are inviting enough to encourage exploring a wealth of features.

Key features

• 3.3″ 16M-color Super AMOLED capacitive touchscreen, WVGA (480 x 800 pixels), multi-touch input support, scratch-resistant glass surface
• Solid 10.9mm-thin metal body
• Bada OS with Samsung Apps
• ARM Cortex A8 based 1GHz CPU
• Quad-band GSM support with dual-band 7.2Mbps HSDPA, 2Mbps HSUPA
• Wi-Fi 802.11b/g/n connectivity with WPS support, Wi-Fi tethering app
• Built-in GPS receiver with A-GPS support, digital compass, Samsung Mobile Navigator
• 5 MP autofocus camera with touch focus, geo-tagging, face, smile and blink detection and LED flash
• 720p video recording at 30fps
• 390MB user available memory, 1GB Bada apps storage and 550MB messaging storage
• microSDHC card slot
• Standard microUSB port and Bluetooth v3.0 with A2DP
• Standard 3.5mm audio jack, TV out
• Stereo FM radio with RDS, FM recording
• Webkit-based Samsung Dolphin Browser 2.0 with full Flash support
• YouTube client, Facebook and Twitter integration
• DivX/XviD video support
• Impressive audio quality