Adam Kalsey of the Kalsey Consulting Group wrote a good review of the Motorola MPx200 Smartphone that provides more details about how it integrates with a typical PC. He likes the MPx200's ability to sync contact information with Microsoft Outlook. This is not a feature that I would be interested in, but, a it would be important to a lot of other potential users.

One somewhat troubling aspect of the review is Adam's experience trying to get the phone activated on the AT&T Wireless network after he purchased it from Amazon.com. Kalsey said:

Last Monday when phone number portability went into effect I ordered a Motorola MPx200 Smartphone from Amazon....

Buying through Amazon was a bit of a hassle. Even though I purchased activation and gave them all my information, the phone arrived without any account information and upon calling AT&T I discovered that they had no record of an account for me. After two attempts at activating over the phone with AT&T I discovered that in order to port my phone number from my previous carrier, they were going to have to give me a new SIM. Rather than wait for one to be mailed to me, I made a trip to a local AT&T store and went through the process of activating the phone for the fourth time. The manager of the AT&T store was pleasant enough and gave me a $30 car charger to make up for the problems I’d had getting service started.

The porting process was simple and painless. I gave AT&T the account information from my previous carrier and my phone number was moved over and my previous account canceled automatically. I started the porting process at about 3pm the day before Thanksgiving and at 2pm Saturday the process was complete. In the meantime, I could make calls from the new phone, but incoming calls rang to the old phone.

It's hard to tell whether Adam's experience getting the phone activated is typical of what would happen to other mobile phone purchasers who buy from Amazon. For one thing, he purchased on the first day of number portability. I assume that customer on-boarding procedures changed to some degree at Amazon, as they did everywhere. Another issue may be that the SIM card issued by his previous carrier may not have worked at all on AT&T Wireless. I know people who have had to change SIM cards to stay on the same carrier after switching from one city to another due to a move.

My conclusion is that SIM cards may look the same, but not necessarily posess the same features. Operation Gadget readers, feel free to correct me if I'm wrong.

This is a very good review of the integration of the MPx200 with a typical PC, and the carrier activation process. I haven't seen much helpful information about these aspects of a smartphone before.