The more features your phone has, the more it'll cost.
Smart Buying: Make sure the carrier you choose has your local area (and those you travel to the most) well covered. The more features your phone has, the more it'll cost: Focus on what you really need and want.
A perfect gift for texting-crazed teens, the LG F9100 is a chubby candy-bar phone, with small and slick but satisfying keys and a bright color screen. Push gently on the bottom half of the phone and a QWERTY keyboard slides out. The instant-message client is easy to use and supports AIM, ICQ, Yahoo!, and MSN. The battery gave us almost 10 hours of talk time.
This cell phone is just for kids: The TicTalk can only call or receive calls from only a parentally approved list of numbers. It's a lightweight, tough plastic oval, with a grayscale screen on the front and a loop near the top for clipping it to a jacket or backpack. Kids can record up to five of their own ringtones, and the gadget comes with five educational games from LeapFrog.
With its powerful combination of excellent features and a reasonable price, the Motorola E815 is a great phone for the manly man in your life, and is our favorite Verizon phone to boot. We got excellent reception in testing, and the impressive battery life gives you 4 hours 43 minutes of talk time. The phone also has a built-in 1-megapixel CMOS camera.
Undeniably gorgeous, the Nokia 7280 phone looks more Saks Fifth Avenue than Circuit City. Its surprising power is buried in a shell that looks like a fashion accessory. It also offers music-quality ringtones, and when the phone rings, it glows a soft red. There are no games or Java, but who cares? This phone is all about looks.
Are your kids hogging the PC to IM? This handheld, solely for instant messaging, works on the AIM, MSN, and Yahoo!, connecting via home 802.11b wireless networks and hot spots. It can even log on to all three services simultaneously. At 6.1 ounces, the Aeronix Zipit Wireless Manager fits in a coat pocket and has a ten-line, black-and-white screen. Concerned parents will be glad to hear that the Zipit rejects unsolicited messages from anyone not already on your kid's buddy list.
So inexpensive that the well-to-do might even consider it a potential party favor, the Palm Z22 is a PDA pared down to its essence. Even though it might resemble a toy, it isn't. The Z22 can hold plenty of Palm OS software and documents in its 20MB of available memory (it has no card slot). It is a simple and easy-to-use device for non-techies who want to stay organized, play a few games, and read a few eBooks.