Motorola Pebl U6 ($299)

Earlier this week I wrote about the excitement that I felt after getting to play around with a couple of Motorola phones last week at CTIA in not-so-lovely Las Vegas: the SLVR (Cingular Wireless) and the PEBL (T-Mobile). Well, seeing as I'm like the man and shit, it didn't take me long to get my hands on them. Since most of you are familiar with the SLVR (it's basically the beautiful love child of the RAZR V3 and the ill-fated ROKR), I'm gonna write about the PEBL.

Let me start off by saying that I dig it. Which isn't to say that it's without fault. In fact, it's a great example of form before function. I was gonna say that it was “nearly the perfect representation of form before function,” but then I remembered the Nokia 7380 that i fawned over in this very blog. But I digress.

The PEBL is most definitely a sexy little phone (it even comes in a multitude of colors) that boasts full Bluetooth support, meaning it works with headsets but also for wireless data transfer: cool. If that's not enough, it also sports a speakerphone, is a world phone, and has built-in instant messaging (Yahoo, AOL, and ICQ). The PEBL has a WAP 2.0 browser that i found to be excruciatingly klugy and slow (I tested it in the Los Angeles area using T-Mobile as the service provider).

While the PEBL was obviously designed to turn heads, it leaves much to be desired on the hardware side. It has a relatively low-resolution VGA camera, the keypad, while cool-looking, can be tricky to use – especially if you're drunk, have big fingers, or worse: both, and it has 5MB of non-expandable memory. Oh wait! But I'm not done. The stylized external display only shows the time, battery life and shit like that and no caller-ID, while the internal display is a scant 1.8-inches. Weak!

Now, that I've criticized the shit out of the PEBL, you'd think that I wouldn't recommend it. On the contrary. With cell phones becoming more complicated, I'm beginning to think that having two phones (on the same plan) is a good idea. For instance, if you currently use a BlackBerry with T-Mobile, than the PEBL would be a great secondary phone for use during the evening and on weekends.