Phone Crazy: New Faces in a Crowded Space

It may be raining cats and dogs, but it's pouring cell phones. There seems to be a cell phone du jour, each with some great innovative breakthrough. The Yahoo! Advisors have been debating the merits of the new crop of phones as we weed out the players for our Last Gadget Standing competition.

Here's a list of some of the best we're seeing and what makes each one particularly innovative.

Tell us what you think. Which one of these phones is on your must-have list?

Blazing Speed: Samsung BlackJack (SCH i607)

Samsung's newest Windows Mobile smart phone is available with Cingular Wireless. The BlackJack is a superslim, sleek phone with a full QWERTY keyboard, Cingular's HSDPA (High-Speed Downlink Packet Access) Broadband Connect technology, Bluetooth 2.0, a nice track wheel, and tons of entertainment and messaging capabilities. HSDPA, as Tom points out in his review, lets you have simultaneous data and voice transmissions at really high speeds. The phone supports applications such as podcasts and RSS feeds, as well as fast downloads of videos and music.

Fully Loaded: Nokia N95

A unique slide design quickly transforms the N95 from a phone into a multimedia player. It's got built-in GPS and maps, so you can search for an interesting place and then find out how to get there, all from your phone. But it's the 5-megapixel built-in camera with Carl Zeiss optics that really hits the ball out of the park. It uses HSDPA or WLAN for fast communications of data and voice. But, yowser, it costs $700.

Thin and Sexy: Samsung Trace

Tom Samiljan says the Trace is simply the thinnest phone available, and it sounds great. It's quad-band, and it has a 1.3-megapixel camera, a MicroSD slot (for the built-in music player or image viewer), Bluetooth, and EDGE (quasi-high-speed data capability). And it sells for under $100.

BlackBerry Breakthrough: RIM BlackBerry Pearl

First available from T-Mobile and now Cingular, the Pearl catapulted the corporate BlackBerry into the world of cool. The phone is well designed, with a great camera, that love-it-or-hate-it multitap keypad, and the signature pearl scroll wheel. Tom fell so in love, he wrote a five-part series on it, and I spent my hard-earned money to make it my phone of choice.

Total Music: LG enV

Yes, for Chris Null, that's spelled envy. This flip-open, clamshell design (reminiscent of the Sidekick) reveals a full QWERTY keypad and a 2-megapixel camera. Verizon brings its high-speed EV-DO, V Cast Music service, and the V Cast Navigator GPS to this phone's party. Toss in Bluetooth and video messaging, keep the weight down to 4.6 ounces, sell it for $150 and you've got a recipe folks will "enV."

A New Classic: Palm Treo 680

Chris is a fan of Palm OS phones but says that the once-groundbreaking Treo 700p was starting to look a little obese. While the 680 is a big improvement, it's still on the chunky side of the new phone lineup. Chris says the camera doesn't measure up to today's other offerings. The price has slimmed down to $199 with a service plan or $399 for an unlocked phone you can use on any GSM carrier.

A Faster Tap: FasTap

Phones like the new LG AX490 use FasTap, a next-generation patented keypad design technology that uses raised and lowered keys powered by error-prevention algorithms so that you can finally type on a phone with ease. Watch this great demo from Phone Scoop on YouTube that pits FasTap technology against other phones and finds the phone disappoints.

Wi-Fi Phones

The D-Link V-Click and others that we can't talk about yet are destined to be the rage at CES. These phones transform themselves from cellular phones (in D-Link's case, it's a tri-band GSM phone) into Wi-Fi phones with the click of a button. Having a Wi-Fi connection in your phone can save you a ton of money if you're out and about and can make it to a hotspot rather than rack up those minutes. The D-Link phone will ship in the first quarter of 2007.

There's lots more. We're expecting to see a bunch of new IM phones any day. Word has it these will transform from being normal DECT cordless phones to let you talk to your IM or Skype buddies without having to sit in front of your computer.

Then there is the gaggle of specialty phones: social networking phones from companies such as Helio and Boost, ruggedized phones such as Casio's G'zOne, and GPS-locator phones such as the Wherifone, designed to track the whereabouts of children and seniors.

Stay tuned and let us know what features you covet in your next phone. There are still 32 more days to CES and Last Gadget Standing. Maybe should we start calling it Last Phone Standing?