I jumped on the Scoble Phone bandwagon last week.

After buying one of these things for himself, Scoble promoted the sucker as though it were the product of his own womb, and it seems to have worked. It looks like geeks are buying these things in large and unsettling quantities. I’m a bit fearful that we might be heading towards a worldwide Audiovox SMT 5600 shortage before long.

Anyway.

The first time I saw one of these was over lunch with Jim Blizzard (who is now moving to Florida (BASTARD)).

The next time was over lunch with Chris.

And that was all it took.

In case you haven’t figured it out, I was the kid who said, “Um… Me too!” when he saw all of his friends doing heroin at school. Getting wasted, barfing on yourself, and getting really constipated (opiates cause a drying of the contents of your intestines – Imodium A-D is actually an opiate that’s too large to cross the blood-brain-barrier – Fun Fact!) seems so much more attractive when done in a group setting.

I picked up my most recent telephonic batch of heroin for about $300 on Amazon and then paid a further $40 to get the software to unlock it so that I could use it with T-Mobile. The unlocking process was simple and straightforward, but that’s probably just because I’m a certifiable, card-carrying genius. Your mileage (or kilometerage for the foreigners) may vary depending on your relative mental retardation.

Once the phone was unlocked, it took about another thirty minutes to find the right settings and prep the thing for T-Mobile’s GPRS network. After that, it was smooth sailing, as they say.

I’m coming to this thing from an iPaq 6315, which I reviewed here, and I’ll tell you this much: this device kicks the iPaq’s sorry little ass up and down the embedded device blacktop. There are advantages to either unit, but the SMT 5600 is so far ahead of the iPaq as a phone/PDA thing that it would be like comparing my fashion sense with… well, your lack thereof.

To start, this thing is much easier to use while driving. I went up to the Joel Spolsky dinner in Seattle recently, and the phone made the drive infinitely more pleasant. It really shows in heavy traffic. Where, with the iPaq, I had to navigate the interface with the stylus, and therefore with both hands (very dangerous while driving), I was able to get around the Audiovox with only one hand, which left 50% of my hands free to do other things (yes – that). The only problem is that it was so easy to get caught up in reading the news on the phone’s incredibly good screen that I sometimes forgot where I was and had a couple close calls.

The drive home was even better. I had Interstate 5 to myself (except for all the other cars), and had a bit more leeway with my driving than I did in the heavy traffic on the way up. Kicking the automobile into cruise control and then finding a comfortable position for my feet, slouching just a bit to the side so that my right elbow was resting on the front passenger seat, I relaxed a bit and read Slashdot, my email, and MSN Mobile while relying on the honking of people in other vehicles to keep me inside my own lane. I was kind of driving in the same way the Roomba vac navigates a room, depending on vague environmental data to prevent me from running into a wall or going off a cliff.

About the only thing I don't like about the device is that it isn’t as easy to get at some settings as it is with the PocketPC phone platform, which is a bit different than the Smartphone platform on top of which the SMT 5600 and its brethren are built. In an effort to keep things simple for the consumer sheep out there in the suburban wilds, the high degree of customization offered by the PocketPC phone system appears to have been traded in for ease of use and increased stability. In the end, though, I think it’s a fair trade. One of the embarrassing things about the iPaq was having to pause in the middle of a conversation and say, “Can I call you right back? I have to reboot my phone.” Stability, I’ve learned, is key in consumer products.

If you’re looking for a Windows-based embedded device that has phone and PDA capabilities, then this is the one you want until there’s something better available. It’s probably the best handheld Windows based device I’ve ever used, and that’s saying something – I’ve owned about five bajillion of the things.

Also, if you’re concerned about having to enter text using the numeric keypad, then you might be happy to learn that ThinkOutside is supposed to be posting a beta SmartPhone driver for its Bluetooth Stowaway Keyboard by the end of the month.

I give this phone a rating of 7,836.5, but I’m not going to tell you what scale I’m using to judge.