For quite some time, I’ve been searching for a phone in the ranks of the Treo, i600, etc. When I first the the HTC Universal, I was drooling. With my impending wedding and recent house purchase, I’ve put myself on a tight budget and wrote off such a pleasure as a pipe dream. Then came the Samsung i730. I made adjustments to my budget and went deal-shopping on ebay. For kicks, I went to my local Verizon store the check pricing. At $619 new, I went back to ebay and found one in perfect condition for $367 (shipped/insured).

Having used it for a week now, I have some pros and some cons to report and things I’ve learned along the way (so far)…

One of the selling factors for the i730 is the 520MHz processor (which happens to be faster than the laptop I’m on right now). At times, I’ll find it taking a couple seconds to recognize my commands, but it’s rare, and I’m getting in the habit of manually removing programs from memory. This is an unfortunate necessity of Windows Mobile 2003, making me seriously consider an upgrade to WM5. The 128 MB ROM and 64 MB RAM doesn’t hurt, and the integrated side-loading SD card slot. I would have preferred the slot on the top of this device, but the sliding keyboard design is an easily accepted trade-off. The keyboard is a bit small, but the keys really stand out for typing by touch and light up when in use for us night owls. The i730 boasts EVDO and WiFi for high speed access when you leave the house. A downside to this is that you can’t use the WiFi while the Phone is “on”, not out of the box, anyway. Check out the i730 forums at pdaphonehome.com to find out how to trick the i730 into letting you have your cake and eat it too. While there, read through the FAQs and search the posts. I signed up to ask questions, but haven’t had to make one post yet as all my questions have been answered in the FAQ and previous posts.

Because the Samsung i730 was targeted towards business users, it’s lacking a digital camera, which I will definitely miss. It does, however, include other toys like voice commands, button customization, and a cool IR remote for your TV, VCR, etc. It seems the IR remote only supports about 8 or 9 TV brands, which I find hard to believe, so I’m still investigating. The buttons on the sides are way to easy to hit on accident, but the smart key lock has allowed me to replace that inconvenience with a lesser one. I keep the key lock on at all times and have carried my i730 around in my pocket without problems. When I want to use it, I have to slide the screen up, temporarily disabling the key lock. Sliding the phone back into its original compact position re-locks the keys so I can drop it right back into my pocket.

After only a week, my only real regret is that I haven’t had the time to really dig my heals into all the tools and apps.