What's the big deal about using an unlocked phone? I have been using unlocked phones for years and simply insert the SIM card for the market I am in and it works seamlessly. Much, much better than being locked in with a "plan".

I used to travel with a Palm Vx and a folding keyboard and loved it. This was in the days before wifi was a possibility so I would upload mail when back in the office. I now use a Centro and it is OK but a larger keyboard for those times when you want to crank out a long message would be better. A smartphone that can actually work as a mini netbook.

The phone looks like something fashioned in a middle school woodshop class. Surely HTC can do a better job on the design side!

I had a Philips dual SIM model a few months ago that I purchased at the Hong Kong airport. Pretty good build quality but the best part was the battery lasted a month on standby! I liked the dual SIM aspect but other features like texting with the keypad were difficult. Phillips seems to be made primarily for the Chinese market so the touch screen could be for written Chinese.

yc: you are right in that a recurring event like a conf call is best tied to a specific timezone so the event shifts when traveling. Other events are easier when the time is fixed. If I am meeting someone at 4 pm in Hong Kong next Thursday, I can put the event in my calendar as 4 pm on Thursday w/o needing to think: gee, what time is that in Seattle where I am today?? I can easily look forward at future events and add or adjust as needed with respect to local time. When everything shifts, it makes scheduling events very difficult when traveling.

The E-series has an excellent build quality so this should be a winner. My only objection to Symbian is the calendar function shifts all entries each time you enter a new time zone. Nokia support tells me this is the way it is....has anyone come across a 3rd party app that allows calendar entries to remain fixed? As a result, I gave the E51 to my wife as she does not travel and got a Palm Centro....the Palm calendar allows a calendar event to be associated with a time zone with the default "no time zone". This system works great.

I was thinking the same thing....thinner is long overdue at Palm.

I bought an unlocked GSM verison and am pretty happy with it. It's a good phone/PDA combo.

I should add the phone was unlocked...I am using it on T-Mobile at the moment.

I picked up a black GSM Centro a few weeks ago from a retailer in the UK...one with sparkles. The Palm O/S is OK and the phone quality is generally fine. There are a few aspects like the thin toothpick-like stylus that I am not crazy about but all in all a decent package if you want to combine a Palm PDA and phone into one unit but don't want to carry around a Treo brick. Camera is also decent. Price was $300 FYI.