Samsung t509 vs. BlackBerry Pearl – No Contest

Thu Apr 5, 2007

I’ve finally received my cell phone from T-Mobile. It’s the Samsung t509, or as I like to call it, the silver plum. My contract was up and I was in search of a new phone. T-Mobile usually doesn’t have a very good selection of phones, so my choices were the Samsung and the every stylish BlackBerry Pearl (the black one of course). Although I am deeply in love with this phone, my budget dictated the former choice.

But back on to perfection. I’m not usually a fan of smartphones. In the increasing era of small, slick, thin phones it seems that smartphones are going in the opposite direction. They are big, fat, and clunky. They make perfect PDAs I guess, but I hate nothing more that to see someone lifting a fat BlackBerry up to their ears and making a phone call. And the way it sits on that belt clip reminds me of those huge Texas style belt buckles that everyone seems to fancy these days. The BlackBerry is fat, the SDA is huge and the MDA is morbidly obese in my opinion.

But then there came the Pearl. When I first saw a picture of the phone I was impressed. It looked like a, well, a phone. But I just figured that, as usual, the pictures were misleading and that it was actually huge in person. I hoped down to a T-Mobile store (actually, it’s just a kiosque) and took a look. I was speechless. The phone is sleek; it’s small; it’s stylish; it’s nice and black and shiny; and it’s functional. The only thing that it lacks from its bigger brothers is that there is a lack of the stylus functionality. That was a little bit of a turn off for me, but just for a minute. I picked it up, made sure the battery was installed and felt it’s weight in my hands. It weighed just a little bit more than my Nokia 6101. Then I dropped it into my pocket and I almost melted with joy. You could hardly tell that it was there.

I stood trying to haggle with the agent for about 30 minutes. My contract was up, so I thought that I had a good bargaining chip. But I was dismayed to find out that I could only get a deal on the BlackBerry Pearl if I also purchased the BlackBerry data plan. Now I’m not a real fan of this plan. I’m still not sure why the BlackBerry needs its own data plan, why it’s so expensive, and why I can’t just use it with the regular internet plan. Reluctantly I walked out with the Samsung t509. At that point, I just wanted to get out of there. What I should have done is head over to Wirefly and see what sort of deals they had on a Blackberry smartphone, but from my understanding their terms and conditions state that you can only use their service to sign up new service with or to switch cell phone providers. Shoot!