I’m just a couple of days back from a trip in Alberta as a part of student exchange. This trip gave us a lot of opportunities to discover a whole different culture and lifestyle. A culture lifestyle full of steak, oil, and cellphones. Steak and oil, I can get over, but cellphones, not. Having those awesome pieces of coolness flashed around me every moment of the day by pretty much everyone (a 10 year old girl on a bus had a Razr. JAWDROP) was just too much for me. On our way back, in the numerous cell phone company booths that the West Edmonton Mall had to offer, I begun checking out how much one of the those brain-tumor generators would cost. I got a rough idea other there, and right back at home, I shopped the intertubes for some decent phones and the plans to go with them. I pretty much decided that I was going to take the Telus Talk-to-me 25 package, with 100 all time minutes, 1000 nights and weekends, and unlimited incoming calls for 25$ a month, plus the unlimited text messaging, which is 10 more bucks per month, plus of course all those standard bullshit hidden fee stuff.

Now that the package is figured out, the tricky part is choosing a phone. Being the smart consumer that I am, I approached the problem in a very organized manner. First of all: what are my needs. I listed a couple of things that I wanted in my new phone to be, and it looked something like this:

• SMS o' plenty
• PC compatible
• Ability engage in vocal conversation by the means of telephony
• Some form of organizational tool, like a calendar, address book or something like that.

So, pretty much what I need was one of the most bread and butter phones of them all, considering that I had didn’t have enough money to buy and operate one of those leet BlackBerries or Palms. Or do I… After some lookups on ebay, I discovered that I could easily get a used Blackberry 7100g for just under 100$, unlocked and all. After some more shopping, I have decided to narrow down my choices to two models.

The Simple Way: LG 490 Fastap

The simplest of all would be to take the phone that interests me that Telus holds and fully supports. The LG 490 is a flip-phone designed for the hardcore SMSer and mobile emailer, with an ABCD keyboard layed out between the number keys on the lower portion of the phone. It has a camera on it, but it's really crappy, which is just fine for me since I don't want a camera anyways. The good side on this phone is obviously the Fastap feature, which is great for a uber-texter to be like myself, and the lack of messing around with unlocked phones. The negative side is that if  I am to buy it on a shorter contract (1 year), I will have to pay a hefty sum of 129$CAN, which for a phone this basic is a considerable amount.

The 1337 Way

My second option is the used Blackberry 7100g on ebay. No need to say more, this Blackberry model is just your average model is just a slimmed down version of that regular dinosaur you see in everyone's hands, a  bit like the Pearl, but a bit less cool and expensive. It has everything you want from a smart phone, being the super neato scroll wheel and escape button of the side, color screen, document viewer (and editor?), HUGE address book, calendar, all that stuff. The advantages of these are all these extra features, plus all the possible add-ons available, like internet, mail and whatnot, which I will activate only if I get rich. Another good side is the fact that I am buying the phone, hence no need for lengthy contracts, with a way cooler phone. The downside is all the messing around with the cell, since it's unlocked. It doesn't have a GSM (or is it GMS) card, which means that I have to buy one of those suckers from my supplier, at ?? dollars plus activation and stuff, and I don't know how smooth the transition will be.

Now, it's all up to the price to determine. What do you think I should get?