Its pretty darn cool.
Growing up with technology around me basically since I can remember (all the way back a Commodore 64) it takes a lot to impress a gen x'r as myself. I recently got a Blackberry Pearl 8130 FREE through a promotional deal my cell carrier had. What these smart phones can do in pretty amazing, but what is better is the ease at which they do it.
There is a learning curve to these smart phones, the keyboard, the ways to access menus, etc. But in the next few years I think phones are going to definately going to be cropping closer to complete pocket versions of our home pc than a traditional phone. I mean, this Blackberry is basically last years model, and I can send a recieve email, text, get news, weather, use facebook, myspace, take 2mp pictures and post them anywhere, listen to any internet radio streams, watch youtube, get gps navigation, have preset searches on craigslist constantly updated and forwarded to RSS feeds, just about anything. The only limit is the software developers imagination.
This thing makes life, easier. And that is worth the price alone. HOWEVER -
I can see a down side. After having that kind of information in your pocket at all times, getting along without it would feel like someone just ran off with your pants. It takes away a sense of adventure a bit, the kind where you want lunch or a coffee so you just drive down the street not knowing where you might end up. You can never get lost with this technology, and that might not be such a great thing. Maybe somone should write a "Get Lost" program for them, so a computer could do that for us too.
