A long time ago I got one of those fancy full-color, polyphonic, joystick controlled cell phones made by a company that shall remain nameless.  I hated it.  It was slow; it took too long to dial.  The interface was clunky; entering contact data was difficult.  I realized I did not care about games, cameras, etc; I just wanted something that would make a call as soon as I hit send.  So I entered the store with a relatively high degree of trepidation and pessimism to get this Audiovox phone that I now hold in my hands.  All of that fear was misplaced though; this is a really good phone.  In fact, I have not owned a device that was this cool since I got my Palm III in college. 

The form factor is perfect-- it is actually smaller than my previous phone, which was some generic el cheapo model.  The screen is bright and easy to read.  The keys are well sized.  The multidirectional control (Is there a technical name for those?  I am refering to the joystick-esque thing in the middle.) is easy to use, if a tad imprecise at times.  Even the black and silver color scheme is perfect.  (Side note: I try to by everything in black, white or silver so it always matches.  This is true of my clothes, furniture, car, computer equipment, etc.  One of the things I hate about snowboarding is you cannot get anything in "just black.")

The UI is responsive.  It is not blazing fast, but it never hangs.  I do not find myself hitting buttons repeatedly.  With past phone I would do this because I did not know if it was hung or if I failed to press the button hard enough.  This is why I have always owned the el cheapo model--at least they tend to make calls quickly.  The UI has only gone wonky once to the degree I had to reboot the phone.  In general I have had to reboot it a few times, but I blame myself for causing some of those problems.  The most egregious issue was when a menu just would not go away.  But I have a tendency to push a lot of buttons rapidly without waiting, so it must have been a random timing issue.  I could not reproduce the issue. 

It comes with an AC outlet power charger, which is normal, but it also comes with a USB cable for synchronization with a PC.  The USB cable charges the phone, which is great.  I can leave the AC charger at home and the USB charger at work, which is where I do my syncing.

The best part, which you will note I saved for last, is the Sync with Exchange feature.  ActiveSync, which I first used about five years ago with an HP Journada, is still a bit clunky.  It took me a while to figure out the magic incantation that was needed to get it to sync with my Exchange server as I walked around the city, but I learned the secret from a coworker.  You have to enter your mail server as: yourserver.yourcompany.com, with no protocol at the front.  I was putting https://.  It should have been smarter than that, but this is not the phone's fault.  Now I can send and receive e-mail anywhere.

My only complaint: Browsing the Web is still too slow, but, again, that is not the fault of the phone but a bandwidth limitation.