smartphone versus phone edition

[gabrandt]

is there any good comparison between WM5 smartphone and phone edition variants? I'm ready to buy and need to decide between iMate k-Jam and SP5m. right now I'm leaning toward k-Jam.

[scottb]

If I understand your question correctly, I believe the major difference is whether you want a touch screen or not. Traditionally WM smartphones only had a numeric keypad, but now some of them come with qwerty keyboards. WM5 is supposed to bring the two closer together so the touch screen should be the only real difference from a user perspective.

[dMores]

think of phone edition devices as PDAs with phone capabilities, and the ms smartphones as a phone with limited pda functions.

i say limited, since the screen is relatively small and text input is done just like sending an SMS.
what separates them from the symbian s60 phones and regular phones is desktop synchronisation via activesync, or sync with an exchange server.

but, they come in really small packages.

you pretty much need to decide, if you want to use your next phone primarily to look up data, or if you want to be able to enter data extensively. in the latter case, i'd suggest you get a k-jam.
if it's a phone you want, that can do more than download jamba ringtones and install crappy java apps, get the ms smartphone.

[IpaqMan2]

My last company also had a few smart phones running MS software. The way I see it was the smart phone was still a phone but with alot of added functions as you would see in some of your higher end phones running symbian. Microsoft smart phones come with all the things Microsoft is known for allowing you sync from Outlook and the such..Where as Pocket PC phones, is still a PDA or Pocket PC which just happens to have a phone built in.

When deciding between the two, I'd suggesst asking your self the following:
Would you still buy a PPC by it self and have a need to use it if you already had a phone that fit your needs? If the answer is "No" than you probably dont need it or will ever really use the full function of a Pocket PC on the phone at which point a smart phone would be a better buy for you. Smartphones usually are smaller and usually cheaper to own.