Our office is in the process of moving folks to smart phones so that we have more efficient access to email. At the moment, I have my choice of phones from Verizon and I am curious to everyone's thoughts on what might be the better unit. I have searched and seen reviews, but not a simple comparison.

Walt Mossberg of the WSJ compared the Q and Treo 700p in his September column in Smart Money:

http://ptech.wsj.com/archive/report-200609.html

While it appears you've limited yourself to the Treo and the Q, I would urge you to take the BlackBerry 8703e for a spin. While it doesn't have the software available for it that the Treo and Q do, it is a serious email solution, provides decent desktop synchronization, and is a functional phone with very good voice quality.

I gave serious consideration to both the BB and the Treo, but I've heard so many complaints about the Treo's stability that I decided that its other attractions weren't that important. I'm also not crazy about having a touchscreen, or to fumble for the stylus to accomplish many of the basic PDA functions either.

I really shouldn't speak for or against the Q, since I don't have any direct experience with it. Given my experience with a WM5-based device in the Axim X51v, though, I think I'd have to reboot the Q far more often than I'd like.

I've had the BB for 3 weeks now, and haven't had to reset it once.

I have heard good things about the Crackberry, but our IT staff prefers that we keep to WM and Activesync.

In that case, get the Q. The main advantage to the Treo in my mind is the Palm software, which is much more thoughtfully designed than Windows Mobile.

Unless you need one of the specific features that the 700w has but the Q lacks, I like the Q form factor better. And my colleague who has been using a Q with Goodlink since it came out has been very happy (he was previously on a Blackberry--I think a 7100-series).

Personally, I'll just stick with my BB 8703e. It's my first smartphone, and I'm very happy with it.

Has he experienced battery life issues?

Just popped in and asked him. He says the battery is the biggest disadvantage to the Q. He recharges it every night and still feels the need to carry an extra battery in his briefcase just in case it poops out. There is an extended battery available, but it gives the device a bit of a bulge in the back, which he doesn't like.

FWIW, the BB 8703e's battery isn't super-duper either. My BB experience has been better than my friend's Q experience on the battery front, but I'm not quite as heavy a user as he is, either.

I'm holding out for the Q Pro, due "1Q2007"

My home is 1XRTT, but most of my travel destinations are EVDO (1XEV). I've found that battery life is easily tripled when I'm on an EVDO network. My 8703e will die in 24 hours at home, but will go at least 3 days on EVDO.

The standard MotoQ's battery life is a severe limitation for heavy email users. I switched from a 700w to the Q about 2 months ago and miss the extra functionality that PocketPC offers over Smartphone. If I forget to charge my Q overnight, I'm without power the following day.

While the portability of the Q is nice, I find myself frustrated by not being able to copy and paste text from emails to websites or contact info and use MS office documents as 'natively' as I did on my 700w.

The 700w had it's shortcomings as well, anemic RAM being the foremost, but now that Sprint released the 700wx with double the RAM, I think that device should meet my power user needs. Rumor has it that Verizon (if you're beholden to that carrier) will release the 700wx in Q1 07.

I've got a 700p, and a good friend has the Q. He hates it. Freezes, battery, and overall quality are things he doesn't like. Some of his buttons don't light up. This is his second one, and hes switching back to a BB. I like my treo, because there is so much software out there to do so many different things. NES/Genesis emulation, movies, etc. It used to crash constantly though, until I deleted one of the homebrew type apps I had put on it. Now its fine. I also like the touchscreen, especially with google maps. Before I had a bb7100. It was fine, but primitive by treo/q standards. If you're going with verizon, doesn't samsung make some kind of smartphone? I thought I saw one last time I was at CC, though that was a while ago.