I resisted buying my own cellphone for a long time as I always worked for companies that provided them for me. Then got a job where they required me to provide my own.
My first phone purchase was the first generation SideKick Color, and I loved it! I still have the SideKick II that replaced it (I traded my original one in on it pre-public-release). I still have the external camera that plugged into the SK Color's headphone jack too.<p>The screen was gimmicky, but oh-so-cool... it got everyone's attention, and allowed me to show people what it could do. Everyone was impressed - until they asked about ringtones. T-Mobile's laser-focus on hip-hop was a real blow there... I'm not into it, nor were any of the people I showed the device to. It really turned people away from it when they realized the target market was teenagers (even though it was an awesome techie's device).<p>The terminal program was my favorite part (I was a Unix Systems Architect at the time) and it got a great deal of (ssh) use.<p>I loved reading through the various descriptions of the apps being developed on the developers site (skdr?) and waited so patiently for T-Mobile to give the green light to so many of them (including a super-simple one, the voice-note-recorder), which they never did. I tried to get my own developer status (can't remember the term they used) so I could get a key and load the apps directly onto my device (via usb), but that was shortly after T-Mobile had made the process extremely difficult with huge forms to fill out and some catch-22 requirement that you had to already have a program published to get the dev kit (or something like that). I read a <i>lot</i> of complaints about that.<p>The best part of the device was the keyboard. It had the best layout and by far the best feel (and spacing) of any phone thumb-keyboard I've used since. Better than the Nokia N800 (NIT, not phone), better than the original Android G1, even better than the N900. It's the only thumb-keyboard I ever used that I could type on without looking at the keyboard, and quickly... far more quickly than anything remotely similar that I've tried.<p>After they cut the service, I used mine as a dumb-phone for a while until the microphone finally stopped working. That forced me to finally get a replacement (my N900).<p>One thing that's pretty impressive about the SideKick II... mine is <i>still running</i> (never been rebooted) since before T-mobile cut the service! I've had it plugged in the entire time for fear that if the battery dies, it will lose the games and programs I have installed (it acted sort-of as a thin client and downloaded all apps you had allocated upon powerup).<p>Pretty darned amazing uptime, considering what it was. :)