Well I read through just about every review prior to purchasing this phone and was almost thinking twice about it after reading some of the reviews here, but I decided to take the plunge and go for it. Well I'm glad I did. All I can say is this phone has been a pleasure to use from the get-go. It has its flaws but what phone doesn't? The question is whether you're going go flip out over an alarm clock or volume strip or is it a trivial issue for you. Most of the gripes others have had just seem little to me. Let's talk about the pros and cons:Pros:1. Call quality is excellent. No static what so ever. No dropped calls. My area has good T-mobile coverage so I can't complain. As a phone it does what it's supposed to do. Make good quality calls. It also pairs with my bluetooth headset (Plantronics 510) really well. Speaker phone is of good quality too.2. Internet works great. I have the $5.99 plan and yes EDGE isn't the fastest but it gets the job done. It doesn't matter where I'm at I can check my email, finds restaurants or directions, or just surf the web when I'm bored. It really came in handy when I was out on vacation and lost. WiFi works well too. Didn't want to fork out the money for hotspots though.3. The camera at 1.3 megapixels is decent quality. No it's not going to replace my regular camera but I found it really handy when I forgot to take my camera to my friend's wedding, but was still able to take quality pictures. I haven't tried videos yet though.4. Mp3/Video player: Now the speakers on this phone aren't the greatest so I wouldn't use them for listening to music but when plugged into a headset it sounds pretty good. I bought a 2GB microSD card bought here at Amazon and now I can hold a ton music and movies. Videos looks pretty nice I'd have to admit. This thing is my travelinig entertainment center. I even found a way to play original nintendo games on this thing and have been trying Mike Tyson's Punchout like back in the old days.5. Calendar/schedule: I had a PDA but for some reason I'm more compelled to actually use my calendar and keep my schedule on this thing than I did with my Pocket PC. Probably because of convenience reasons.6. Smartphone applications: I'm in the medical field and I keep all my medical applications on this phone. I can quickly look up drug references or research diseases. I really thought I'd need a touchscreen in order to better navigate these programs and while it might be slightly easier with a stylus, I don't find that it's all that necessary and still navigate pretty well. I just wish the processor were slightly faster for some of these apps, but it's more than adequate. And I'm not sure why people don't think there are a lot of programs for the smartphone. Programs written for WM5 are compatable with PPC as well as smartphones equally. [...].7. Appearance: Everyone who sees this phone absolutely loves its looks and so do I. It looks great and feels great. I saw this side by side with the Motorola Q and the Q just looked so much bulkier and...well... not as nice. The rubber backing feels awesome.8. Battery: For all that I use this phone for it makes it through the day with plenty battery to spare which is all I can really ask for. I wouldn't go 2 days without charging the battery though. You should charge it every night.Cons:1. Windows Mobile 5: Mighty Microsoft needs to write a cleaner program. However Windows Mobile 6 is on the way and will be free to download for T-Mobile customer soon so hopefully that'll take care of some of the problems. I swear just to turn on the bluetooth and pair up my bluetooth device takes me a whole minute just because of how hard it is to navigate WM5.2. Volume strip: Yeah like everyone says it sucks. I disabled mine. Adjusting the volume with this thing is tedious at best. Luckily my music/video programs as well as my stereo headset allow me easier ways to adjust the volume so it's not such an issue for me.3. Alarm clock: Now I don't use this all that much but I see what everyone says about it and yeah it's a pretty idiotic written program. However rather than writing half a page on how bad it is I downloaded a free one from the internet that works great so my life now goes on.Summary: So I use this device to make quality phone calls, surf the web, check email, play games, listen to music, watch movies, monitor my schedule, check my medical references, and take decent quality pictures. All this thing needs now is a laser beam that will cut through metal and it'd be the greatest gadget known to man.