The nokia has a keyboard, a different (but larger) form factor, 10 hour battery life, a concept of an email directory, settings so you don't have know all the background fiddly things for SMS email, use it with out a head set, use it as a speaker phone, polyphonic rings and all the nice new features of todays modern phones. Tmobile doesn't carry it, however.
In fact, as far as I can tell cellular is the only one to offer it at all and only in Los Angels, Chicago and few other select locations. I like my current cellphone plan anyway, since it's cheaper than anything else anyone is offering and has nationwide free longdistance and no roaming fees.
So I poked around and as far as I can tell it will work with tmobile (the manual says it uses a sim card, tmobile says the US is 1900Mhz, and the review on cnet used tmobile's network to test it.) (BTW, if you look for information about this phone, look for the US info and not the UK or you will get confused.) but if I buy it independnantly I can't get any service extention discount. It looks like I could get it from ebay for about $200-$250, which I think that I could afford if I save up for it, though perhaps I shouldn't.
Physically the phone is kind of big, but I think that I will enjoy it more than my current one. I should go visit simliar sized nokia phones and see what I think.
I emailed tmobile to ask if they knew when they would offer it, and they said "we don't know." I'm currious to know if they could special order one for me and give me the extention discount.
That was dry and boring, but since I spent my day reasearching, learning and making up mock boxes, I thought it was post worthy.
Anyway, I can't really afford anything until late August and perhaps I should wait until my service contract is up in october, but I'm really tempted to buy one off ebay in late August.
EDIT: Hm... I was wrong about some things about my current service plan. Maybe I should switch to at&t. I will have to research how much they suck.