The Pantech Duo is fully announced and available now, so the above is your first look. I said that “I am happy it's inexpensive” in the video, but somehow in my mind I was thinking (as opposed to thinking out of my mind, which also happens sometimes) that it was $99 after contract, not $199:

The Pantech duo is available now in the U.S. exclusively from AT&T for a special introductory price of $199.99 at AT&T retail stores nationwide, online at www.wireless.att.com, at select national retailers and through AT&T's business-to-business sales organizations

Read: AT&T- News Room

I suppose that the Duo might be more approachable than a Blackjack to some people, but I doubt there are a lot of those people. Pantech gets points for jumping into Windows Mobile and for introducing a pretty-cool dual-slider format. But for my money, the form factor simply isn't compelling enough to make it more desirable than the many other options out there at similar price points. My opinion: pass on the Pantech and getcherself a Blackjack.

I own three cradles -— one for my office desk, one for my entertainment center and finally one near the night-stand. Two are what I’ll call the “basic”, that’d be the Mobi Cradle ($19.95) and the other is the nicer “PowerCradle” for $24.95.

Cradles are great and if you don’t have one (or two, or three), you should seriously consider it. Here’s why: it’s a convenient single place to always place your Treo when you get home—you walk in the door, throw the phone in the cradle—as opposed to say, just tossing it anywhere, inducing a mini-search and recovery mission later. The other great benefit is with the phone cradled, the Treo’s speaker is now completely exposed, allowing you to hear your alarms, incoming calls or even your streaming internet radio. Finally, if on your desk, night-stand or entertainment center, your cradled-phone allows you’re to visually see your caller ID coming in, quickly read your test message or look for new notifications without little effort (score for laziness!). Oh, plus your phone will always have a charged battery and you don’t have to fiddle with cables.

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My pal Ben Higginbotham of Technology Evangelist has called me out publicly on our debate about email on the iPhone. I say the iPhone sucks at email, he says it the bestest (yes, I'm oversimplifying. A lot.). I've been meaning to comment over at TE (you should consider doing it yourself, it's an interesting post), but instead am just going to do a full WMExperts Smackdown here.

I love you Ben, but you might want to go find some ointment, because I have a strong feeling this is going to sting a little. Click through for the fun.

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In the forums, a recent discussion came up regarding screen sizes, orientation and resolution and which is preferable. Leaving resolution to the side for a moment (since I think it’s universally agreed that higher is better), let's look at what WM devices currently offer and why some orientations are better for certain things than others.

• WM5 & 6 Non-touch screen: 320x240 i.e. landscape. These are devices like the Motorola Q series, HTC Dash/Excalibur and Samsung Blackjack I & II
• WM5 & 6 Touch screen: 320x240 (very few e.g. Zenum Opus), 240x240/320x320 Square (Treos & Samsung i780), 240x320 (HTC 6700, 6800, Touch, Tilt, etc.)

Overwhelmingly WM devices tend to be 240x320 orientations, and 320x240 for smartphones. Exceptions abound such as the Treo line or the HTC Vox.

So when shopping a device, which is better and for what? Obviously some of this just comes down to personal preference and some people will just flat out like one orientation over another. But besides this there are some practical things to consider when judging a device.

The Full Smackdown is after the break!

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