Smartphone vs. ROKR

In a completely biased post, based solely on what I use my phone for, here is the Audiovox SMT 5600 (a phone that's been out for more than a year) vs. the Motorola ROKR (aka the iTunes phone)

Audiovox SMT 5600		Motorola ROKR
Carrier:
Cingular		Cingular
Price:
$200 ($250 - $50 mail in rebate)**		$250**
Bluetooth Headset:
Calls, Music with Bluetunes		Calls Only*
Music Formats:
MIDI, WAV, WMA, MP3, OGG (w/ 3rd party)		MIDI, WAV, MP3, AAC
iTunes?:
Yes with ppcTunes ($9.95)		Yes, Native
Other Music Services?:
Yes Napster, MSN Music, others.		No
Video:
WMV, MPEG4, (Divx, Xvid via 3rd parties)		MPEG4
Platform:
Windows Mobile		J2ME
IM:
MSN Messenger.		Wireless Village
Expansion:
MiniSD, current max, 1Gig		MicroSD, current max 512k
Expansion Cost: (Amazon.com)
1 gig, $79, 512K $50		512k, $60
Skins:
Yes		Yes
Cool Factor:
Small, slim , BRIGHT, turns heads. No "oooo shiny" factor		Apple WOW is Missing, Cool name
MS Hate Factor:
Low, it's an MS OS		Medium Java + Apple but not open source

Music Storage:

No contest. 1gig & high compression WMA vs. 512k & MP3? c'mon I've got 300 songs in 260 megs. MP3 can't compete.

So the geek in me says, most serious folks will buy the biggest capacity possible. If that's true, the CPA in me says buy the Audiovox, use the $50 savings to up your capacity to 1gig, add ppcTunes and put $10 in your pocket. However, my MBA says that we buy what we want and then rationalize. We don't buy rationally. That means that despite it's mediocrity, Motorola will still sell a lot of iTunes phones.

Still, Color me unimpressed with the iTunes phone. I'll stick with the Audiovox.

* per Motorola's website
** per Cingular's website

Upate: I woke up this morning with a few more thoughts.

• The ROKR phone is butt ugly, coyote ugly. It looks thick too.
• Orb. Stream your conent to your phone. Don't store it there. You can't do that with iTunes.