I take back anything bad I've ever said about the Samsung Ace - it's not bad at all. A straightfoward, EVDO Windows Mobile 6 QWERTY Smartphone sounds fine, add in the fact that you can slap a SIM card in, reboot, and have it work on GSM makes it better. All the standard Samsung add-ins are here: their small apps, the jog wheel, the weird proprietary connector. Keyboard's a little clacky, but otherwise is second only to the Q9 in this category of YAQKWMS.

If I had to knock the Ace, I'd say the biggest downside is that the GSM radio is locked. Meaning that if you want to actually use it you have to set up a wonky international plan with Sprint. It would have been much better to just be able to purchase pay-as-you-go SIMs internationally. Hopefully getting this sucker unlocked won't be too difficult.

We told you it was was coming soon and we didn't lie. The Samsung Ace is available now on Sprint. It's $449 before contract, $199. It's a little spendier than we'd hoped, but we sorta forgot about the Ace's key feature: It's a world phone. That's right, in addition to the CDMA bands, the puppy also sports GSM 1800/800 Bands (as in, no 3G on GSM that we know of). You can hit Fn + S to switch between radios (slick!)

The battery is also a full 1300mAH, which is slightly better than average these days for a YAQKWMS

Go check it out at Sprint

I've been using the YAQKWMS (Yet Another Qwerty Keyboard Windows Mobile Smartphone) tag for awhile now as a sort of inside joke - well, if a joke that only I get counts as "inside." Anyway, the punchline to this interior humor is that these phones are pretty tough to distinguish from one another. They all share Windows Mobile 5 with few (if any) software enhancements, they all have QWERTY thumbboards and 320x240 screens. And so on.

That's unfair, though, because the hardware differences between these YAQKWMS are more than just cosmetic - they have real world functional differences. I'm not just talking about specs, though of course those are important - slight differences in battery life, the addition (or subtraction) of side buttons, the inclusion of WiFi, and more all add up to making your decision a little more difficult.

Today we're going to ignore all that and focus on one aspect: thumbboards. And furthermore we're just going to focus on the big three here in the US, the ones with the most saturation in the US market right now: the T-Mobile Dash, the Cingular Blackjack, and the Motorola Q (available on several networks). Read on for a thumbboard smackdown between these big three Smartphones.

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I scroll through my news feed pretty darn quickly, so when this image flashed by I found myself frantically scrolling back up -- Whattheheck? Engadget Mobile is similarly shocked:

Whoa, what do we have here? First up, this is the first smartphone (thought not the first phone) we've seen with the new AT&T branding. Second, this is the first partnership of which we're aware between China's Amoi and an American carrier. Third -- and perhaps most importantly -- the QWERTY-equipped Windows Mobile 5 Smartphone evokes the storied "SMT" model series which long ago served up the original AT&T Wireless' SMT5600,

It's Yet Another Qwerty Keyboard Windows Mobile Smartphone, it's Yet Another FCC Leak (that needs a tag of its own, doesn't it?), it's pretty straightforward. When we'll see it, I don't know, but since Cingular/AT&T has the Blackjack already, why would they want to pull sales away from that? Maybe this has better battery life.. or more likely, better margins for AT&T.

Mike Calligaro puts up a fairly long blog posting on what seems to be a fairly short topic - the fact that YATQKMS (Yet Another Thin, QWERTY Keyboard Windows Mobile Smartphone) devices like the Q or the Dash don't have those "ABC", "DEF" etc. buttons on their number pads, so dialing named-800 numbers can be a pain sometimes. ...This isn't a pain I've ever felt personally, but apparently there are some that do.

Instead of just laughing at these oddballs, Calligaro actually goes into some depth about how WM's dialer works and offers a couple solutions (including suggesting you search for a hack). The fun bit, though, is at the very end, where he says that while he can't make promises, Microsoft's WM team wants to.

...of course, using a Pocket-PC Smartphone like the Treo solves the problem neatly - by including a touch-screen dialpad like my Treo's, pictured.

As always, I can’t announce features.  But I will say that the Q is one of the hottest selling Windows Mobile devices ever.  And the general category of QWERTY Smartphones is doing very well.  While we don’t consider the ability to dial personalized phone numbers the most important feature on a phone, we do recognize that it’s an important feature.  So, while I can’t announce features or dates or even promise that anything will be done, I can say that we want to provide a real solution that’s better than the user ones above.

Read: Windows Mobile Team Blog : How do you dial 1-800-FLOWERS?

According to Sascha Segan, you can add the HP iPAQ hw6925 to the long list of YAQKWMS that tries very hard to do it all and ends up not quite doing anything well (Motorola Q, I'm looking at you). Its killer feature, as far as I'm concerned, is integrated GPS. That's "killer" as in "awesome" and as in "kills battery life." The 240x240 screen doesn't bother me too much, but then I'm used to it.

The new HP iPAQ hw6925 tries to be the ultimate traveling companion, bringing together an unusually flexible GPS system, phone, and PDA in one easily pocketable unit. But its small, low-res screen and below-average battery life make it less useful than it could be.

Read: HP iPAQ hw6925: Full Review - Review by PC Magazine

I know it's not a huge deal that somewhere in the world we have YATQKMS (Yet Another Qwerty Keyboard Windows Mobile Smartphone), but the i-mate JAQ3 is notable because of its combination of touchscreen, qwerty, and wifi. It's like a Treo without the square screen. Maybe I'm just easily impressed as I'm still stuck in a wifi-less world.

Also notable, as Brighthand points out, the JAQ3 is a reminder that there are manufacturers other than HTC out there. :)

By current standards this device is a bit weak in cellular-wireless capabilities; it has GSM and GPRS but nothing faster. However, it sports both 802.11b and g.

This model, which includes a 2.0 megapixel camera, was designed and manufactured by TechFaith Wireless, the company i-mate turned to for smartphone development after HTC decided to no longer let i-mate sell its products.

i-mate is now offering the JAQ3 in the Middle East. It will likely expand the availability of this device at some point in the future.

Read: New Pocket PC Phone with Wi-Fi Now Available from i-mate

Looks like Canada will be first out of the gate with the Black MotoQ. Specs are identical, though it might be worth mentioning that they're using a "soft-touch paint" that's seems to be popular ever since Palm put it on their 750v. No word on what the frozen climes of Canada will do to the MotoQ's battery life.

*Motorola Canada Ltd. today announced the global launch of the Moto Q in Black, the latest Moto Q colour available exclusively from Bell Canada. The Moto Q in Black is a broadband-enabled smartphone that combines voice, data and multimedia functionality in a design that is less than 1.15 cm thin.

Read: CNW Group

Now that Cingular has unveiled the Blackjack, reports are starting to trickle in.

PhoneScoop (among many others, see below) has published a preview/review of the Blackjack, aka the SGH-i607, aka YATQKWMS (Yet Another Thin Qwerty Keyboard Windows Mobile Smartphone), and overall they seem pretty happy with it. The standard by which all these devices are compared still seems to be the MotoQ and though the Blackjack does beat the MotoQ in battery life, it's nothing to write home about.

The BlackJack is also known as the Samsung i607. Like Samsung's other recent entry into this category, the i320, it is narrower than the Q, Dash or almost any other QWERTY phone. Thus despite its rectangular shape, the BlackJack fits nicely in the hand. The edges along the left and right sides are slightly rounded, increasing the comfort factor. It is easy to wrap your hand around it if you are using it one handed

If you're really pumped about the smartphone, there's also a video of the Blackjack in action over at Cingular's PR site.

Read: Preview: Samsung BlackJack (Phone Scoop)

Read: Laptop Magazine Review

Read: SlashGear Review