To Duo or not to Duo

Time For a New Phone
So when the time came for my plan to upgrade me to a knew phone i had several choices waiting for me. Since i belong to Cingular which is now the new at&t the Duo was one of my options. However it never really crossed my mind to get until i got to the store to pick out my new phone. The phone i had in mind was the Blackberry Curve Since it was new at the time because i got this phone around May 2008 and the all in one craze was still in season as now and i really thought it looked like the phone i needed. The only thing that was unappealing in the greastest to me was that i always keep my phone in my pocket and having the bulcky blackberry in my jeans just didn't seem as comfoartable as some of the other options. So the women at the store pushed the Pantech Duo on me because of it's slide out keyboard and T9 ability it seems like the perfect phone for a text-a-holic. What can i say...i caved and now it's all i have.

Ease of Use
From the start the Duo is a very easy phone to operate and use and never really gave me any problems. The windows mobile package that is included with the phone is great as well because it's gives the phone the ability to check email, excel, word, and powerpoint documents. Since the duo is a smart phone the company requires that a multimedia service package is bought with the phone. This is a hefty sum compared to the normal phone bill but it has unlimited everything and can be cancelled after a few months allowing normal service to resume on this very capable phone. The internet on the phone is pretty bad in general unless the phone is in a 3G area that at&t has since the phone is 3G capable then it's not bad at all. Overall the phone is simply laid out and not hard to use for anything that it is capable of.

So What Dont I Like
So ultimatley you can read specs for what the phone can do and all the good little features it has so what is bad about it. Well when the keyboard is flipped out the screen has to switch from vertical to horizontal since there is only one screen and it seems like the older this phone gets the longer that switch takes. Now it takes about 3 or 4 seconds for the screen to roll over once i switch the the full keyboard and thats forever if your texting when you not supposed to like in the car, gym, class things of that nature. The biggest problem however is the text messages. Sometimes when i go to my inbox the phone just wont let me do it. I'll click on the text messages but the phone just wont proccess the request no matter how long i wait. The only way that i've found to fix this problem is to just yank out the battery and reboot. The last problem is similiar when im trying to answer a phone call. Several times i've just missed calls because when i hit the answet button the phone simply wont do it. Why i have no idea. The last and most important thing is that the phone feels really cheaply made. Since it can slide out two different ways there is a lot going on with this phone and all the sliding sections seems loose and move around too easily. I constantly feel like im gonna drop the phone and see it in three unfixable peices.