BlackBerry Curve 8520

OS: BlackBerry 4.5
U.S. carrier: T-Mobile USA
Price: $130 with two-year contract
Availability: Now

What makes it cool: One of the more affordable BlackBerry phones, the Curve 8520 offers mobile access to work and personal e-mail and built-in social networking applications. And in a first for BlackBerry, it boasts dedicated keys for certain media features such as skipping or repeating songs.

Where it may fall short: The device is designed to run on T-Mobile's older EDGE wireless network, rather than the faster 3G network that is now being built and expected to deliver faster data downloads.