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I own a Samsung Sch-i760 that comes preloaded with Windows mobile 6, the interface is a little too business like for me, but after some help from http://www.pdaphonehome.com/ i quickly modified the interface. Windows also released the 6.1 update which added a task manager , and threaded text messages. I must say that Windows Mobile is very stable and very enjoyable.

Here's my setup for when I need to do remote support while on the move:

HTC Kaiser (also sold as HTC P4550, TyTN II & AT&T Tilt 8925)

The phone has a slide-out keyboard which is quite useable and a 240 x 320-pixel, 2.8-inch display. Bluetooth and wifi (802.11g). The TyTN II is a quad-band handset with 3G and HSDPA and it also has GPS + Tomtom satnav!

PockeTTY

VNC

WM6 Remote Desktop (RDP)- can be downloaded from here if not pre-installed.

Roll-up fabric bluetooth keyboard

More phone info in the user forums and wiki:
http://www.htcforums.com/kaiser-tilt-tytn-p4550-f13/
http://forum.xda-developers.com/forumdisplay.php?f=377
http://wiki.xda-developers.com/index.php?pagename=HTC_Kaiser

I don't know about anybody else, but the ability to add, tweak, hack, etc. my pda phone is one of the primary reasons I have the thing.

I have had a Samsung i730 for about a year now. I tried the i700 before that (though only for 13 days, and returned it for a regular phone since it was flaky). Thanks to sites like PDAPhoneHome and members like mrailing and sdave, the i730 has been made even more capable than it originally was. The ability to tweak and modify is essential.

I had my wife get a motorola 815 for this very same reason. Before the i730 I had a small samsung phone that I could tether to my laptop (or the mac mini while I had it, before the cable modem was installed) and have net access.

As sleek, shiny, and cool as the "iPhone" is, if they want to lock me out, then I just won't buy it. There are plenty of other options. Maybe not as cool looking (for now) as the iPhone, but a lot more open and flexible. Besides, what's the point of bragging about OSX running on this thing if they are going to lock everyone out of it?

Oh well, last night I told my wife I was going to be getting a cingular account in a few months -- guess I won't have to worry about that now, if this is true. :(

My question is specific: what happened to IBM's "Engine 18" project, which would let dinky smartphones grab whatever DGPS data they could, post it to servers over a 3G connection for processing, and receive their coordinate? If they included the "signal strength" radio data path, through a precalibrated signal space, they could get pretty high reliability and precision: probably <10m 90% of the time. Where is this project?

For more than a year, I was in complete heaven. I did not pay for a data plan, and got info for logging into a 3G data connection from PDA Phone Home. A net connection was billed as regular voice minutes. Couple that with unlimited nights and weekends, and I could use the Internet at will.

I could hook the phone up to my laptop using the USB cable and connect at 28.8-36.6 anywhere with cell service and surf at will after 9pm.

Now several users are upgrading from 2-year-old Kyoceras to the Treo 650 and are getting burned, even with the slower/older QNC service.

I suppose I should have felt lucky that I got cheap cellular internet access for so long, but it's hard to start paying for something when you got a free ride before.

Verizon calls their EV-DO service 'BroadbandAccess'; I have it on an Audiovox XV6600 phone (Windows Mobile and phone).

My experience

The service works very well and has been as reliable as my cellular voice calls. I forget it's there or that it's anything revolutionary, which is a good sign of it's usability. Latency is high, but it's just a little annoying in practice; I haven't tried anything interactive like chat, but some people claim to have used VOIP and iChat video conferencing with great success -- see these resources for that and other useful info:
http://evdoinfo.com/
http://evdoforums.com/

Note that upload speed is only promised to be 60-80 Kbps.

The Audiovox XV6600 phone is low quality: Bugs, crashes, talktime way too little (extra/larger battery almost required) , earpiece volume too low, bluetooth problems, etc etc etc. For early adopters only, really. I wanted it EV-DO badly enough, so I decided to live with it. The best resources on the phone (really an HTC Blue Angel, rebranded):
http://www.xda-developers.com/
http://www.pdaphonehome.com/

The phone is ~$45/month for unlimited service. A pcmcia card is ~$80/month. Note that the terms of service prohibit using the phone as to provide access to other devices.

Terms of service

Verizon's terms of service probibit downloading or streaming music, and other things. If you use the phone, the terms prohibit using it to bridge Internet service to other devices. More details here:
http://evdoforums.com/about77.html

OTOH, I've never heard of that being enforced, but I'm not sure that I would.

Vendor plans for rollout

Some info here:
http://evdoforums.com/forum-9.html

Also interesting, since ultimately it would mean that you could run palmos on pocketpc.

Two notes:
1. Huh? Why would you come to that conclusion? Linux != WinCE. Even sharing the same APIs- POSIX+X, doesn't mean that another Unix OS like Solaris or *BSD could even run this neccesarily.

2. you already can, to some extent.

pda phone forum, here's the link for 'your askslashdot question' in an entire forum
PS, I love my 7135

I will ask this question to PDA phone mavens at Mobile Showcase Showcase, which I am attending. You can see the result once I've gotten to ask some of the notables present.

However, Linux bears the seed of its own lack of progress; who's going to water the tree from which it grows?

PDA phone development is not just hacking code to throw on a PC, whose architecture is planned years in advance at every WinHEC and painstaking documented in dozens of new titles every year (my fave being Robert Bruce Thompson's PC Hardware in a Nutshell).

Utterly different devices, PDA phones are. Since they are phones, their internal radio architecture is morphing on incredibly rapid cycles, as the cellular carriers are pushing the bleeding edge with new modulation systems as rapidly as their supply of 'the most important engineering material' (money) will permit.

PDA phones also must be approved before market by the FCC Stateside, and similar regulatory agencies Elsewhere, using standards far more involved and rigorous than are applied to PCs. More delays, more money.

There's no Linux sugardaddy like PalmSource or Microsoft to push that progress, is there? Maybe that explains why Linux phones don't exist.

Look at PDA phones. Right now, the US market distribution (as per IDC) is:

Smartphones:

PalmOS has 32%, Other OS have 24%, Symbian has 23% and Microsoft has 11%. Linux is 0%.

Handhelds:

PalmOS has 65%, WinCE/Pocket PC has 34% and Linux has 1%. One per cent.

But, you really don't _need_ a manufacturer, anymore. Samsung and other PalmPhone makers are turning loose their specs and firmware source to developers.

If you want a Linux PDA phone, go right ahead. Write the code to turn a SPH-i500 into a Linux Phone.

Me, from my Olympian perspective, I and I think it won't happen. By the time it could, the cellular mutant of the PSTN will be replaced by an ubiquitious IP cloud, through WiFi and WiMAX, and Linux devices will wirelessly use IP telephony, the heirs of Skype, to enulate telephony, and skip right over the idea of a LinuxPhone.

You read it here first.

Hmm, according to this thread it seems that it's accidental, and you might even get charged for it. In any case, do you need a special phone to use it? I have the serial cable adapter, but it only seems to work at 14.4 when I connect. Is there a different number you need to dial? I use #777, I think.

According to E Week:

Sprint PCS Group, Cingular Wireless LLC, AT&T Wireless Services Inc. and T-Mobile USA Inc. all plan to start selling the Palm OS-based smart phone, starting in the fall.

AT&T Wireless will start selling the device by the end of the year, according to officials at the Redmond, Wash., company, who declined to give pricing. T-Mobile U.S.A. Inc. finished its field trials of the Treo 600 this week and has yet to announce a launch date.

And while we're googling, the names "Orange" and "Europe" have been mentioned together wrt this device.

I'll be haggling with my designated AT&T representative over this one. :)