Choosing a Smartphone for Real Estate

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By: Darin "Sid" Cameron, CRS
Wed, Oct 31st, 2007 1:14 pm

An agent in my office wants to upgrade phones and just asked for my smartphone recommendations.

We just migrated from the Treo 650 (Sprint/Palm) to the Cingular/AT&T 8525 (Win).

What I really like about it is it uses the newer/faster AT&T 3G network to become a Bluetooth or USB modem for a laptop (and it charges via the USB cable). It was cnet.com and a couple of other site's top pick for a smart phone at the time we changed.

No, it's not as sexy as an iPhone, but it has the business applications down whereas the iPhone is (currently) more entertainment oriented.

The 8525 can also run Supra software as well as clients for any Windows Mobile CRM application (ACT! for sure and I believe Top Producer). Those two reasons right there are why we picked it over an iPhone.

It has a bigger screen than a Treo and a nice larger keyboard. I have a push email provider I'm going to eventually use, but I haven't gotten that far yet (but it can be done). For right now, however, we're just checking email via a browser.

And thanks to the release of the iPhone, the price was just cut in half!!!

What I don't like about it is AT&T makes you have two plans- one for phone and the other for data- then they charge you extra for it to work as a modem. Naturally that wasn't disclosed by their people when I purchased the plan and I spent several hours trying to set up the modem before tech support clued me in (It's another $20/mo for the modem).

One last note, regardless of what phone you buy, most of the major franchises have discount programs for the hardware and plans (I know RE/MAX has AT&T with Sprint coming and Prudential has Sprint). I was going to buy my phones via eBay because they were $500 at the store but I got them through the RE/MAX discount for $199 each.

Hope this helps.