Not a Smartphone, but Smart Enough

I'm on day 2 of my switch from my Kyocera 7135 (he's dead, Jim) to the Samsung U740 Black Phone (Verizon Wireless). Let me say that, for its size, it is packed with features.

Pros

The phone works in two orientations--portrait for phone features and landscape for email, text and other writing-intensive features.

The keyboard is much easier to use than I'd thought. As a former Palm graffitist, I thought their funky keyboard would be hard to get used to. I'm already zipping along with it. Love it.

The battery life is surprisingly long.

It's skinny. Now this might not sound like much to some, but it can fit in my slacks and almost disappears in my purse.

I can use voice recognition for speed dialing or to enter phone numbers hands-free. I think I can also use it to "type" messages." We'll see.

The sound clarity is very good.

I don't yet have a bluetooth headset, so there's an nifty little adapter that allows me to plug in my other headset.

Camera is very nice.

The alarm is suitably annoying--woke me up this morning (and the husband...and the cat...and the goldfish).

Cons

When one enters a phone number the digits are gigantic and can be read from space. I think this would worry me if I was in a crowd.

Many features only work in 1 orientation or the other. I've started some tasks in portrait and, when I switched to landscape, I lost my place and was sent back to the start screen.

The Samsung calendar is a little limited, but it still gets the job done.

The timer feature is a little too basic. I used the timer I'd downloaded on my Kyocera extensively for talks, presentations and training seminars. That one let me time up or down. This one only lets me time up. My mind works in "how much time do I have left?" not "how long have I gone?"