The Motorola SLVR

This Christmas my girlfriend got me a cell phone. Fortunately I got to go with her a pick it out. I was looking at the Samsung Blackjack because it had some really good internet capabilities. Then the sale man told me you needed to buy the $40 “internet package”. I hate how they get you with all the little addons. Then I was looking at this other phone which was nice and small but I couldn’t figure out to use it. My rule of thumb is if you cannot figure out how to use something within 10 minutes don’t get it. I prefer to figure it out myself then read the manual.

The next phone I looked at was small and wasn’t a flip-phone (I am getting sick of flip phones). The size of the phone was pretty important to me. I didn’t want a large clunky phone in my pocket.

As I was glancing over the specs of the phone I noticed it came with iTunes. I guess I had missed the announcement that Apple was putting iTunes on other phones besides the ROKR. The model of the phone I was looking at was the Motorola SLVR.

I was pretty impressed with the capabilities of the phone. It lets me use MP3s (and other audio files) as my ringtone, I can create my own wallpaper, I can use AOL Instant Messenger and it has a built-in camera. The best feature was the fact that it worked with iTunes.

iTunes recognizes the phone and brings you through a little a setup, much like the one that happens when you plug in a new iPod to your computer. You can choose how much space you want to allocate to music and how much to data. I think I split it in half. That way I can put some pictures on there too. You can choose to auto-fill or you can manually put the music onto the phone. When you’re done filling up the phone with music and other data you eject it just as you would any other iPod or removable hard drive.

It comes with a 512MB MicroSD card which is enough space for about 5 CDs or so. It uses a mini-USB port for connecting to the computer and also for charging (when plugged into the wall). The phone will also charge when you plug it into a computer (just like an iPod) which I thought was very cool.

The main reason I got this phone was because it would work with my Macintosh and it was cheap. I was going to wait until after Macworld just incase Apple released a phone, but my girlfriend insisted on me getting one. So rather then get the more expensive Samsung Blackjack it was smarter for me to get a decent phone that was also cheap.

You can find out more about the phone here.