The scoop: Samsung Ace smartphone, with Sprint service, about $200 (with two-year agreement and $100 rebate).

Click to see: The thin and light Ace smartphone uses Windows Mobile 6.

What it is: A Windows Mobile 6 smartphone that runs on Sprint’s Mobile Broadband Network (EV-DO Rev. 0) in the United States, the Samsung Ace also attains "world phone" status through an additional GSM/GPRS radio, offering users the ability to make phone calls around the world, wherever Sprint has international roaming agreements. A Sprint-provided SIM card is pre-installed for customers who want to use Sprint’s International Roaming Services, but the phone also comes with an unlocked SIM, which lets users put in a third-party SIM card if they have their own international agreements with carriers (many enterprises do).

Why it’s cool: Beyond the international nature of the phone, the Ace has a slim, compact device (it weighs under 4 ounces) with a full keyboard and 2.3-inch color display. The light weight of the device made it feel more like a regular cell phone rather than a heavier, bulky smartphone.

The Ace has a built-in speakerphone and 64MB of internal memory, and can support up to 2GB of data on an external microSD storage card. The Ace contains many standard smartphone features and applications, including a Web browser (Internet Explorer Mobile), e-mail support (Internet mail as well as Exchange Server 2003 connections), text messaging and a file viewer for reading Word, Excel and PowerPoint documents. Bluetooth 2.0 is built in, not only for hands-free headsets but also for stereo speaker support.

I liked the built-in RSS Reader application, which can access the blogosphere and download the latest RSS feeds from your favorite blogs and other syndicated Web content. However, adding specific feeds looked quite daunting, if not impossible, and I ended up relying on trying to use the "feed search" feature to try and find my favorite feeds. I had mixed success. When I typed my own name into the search feed, it did come up with several different feeds that I contribute to, but I couldn’t input specific feed URLs into the application.

The Ace continues the trend of merging business features with consumer features, as the phone includes a 1.3-megapixel digital camera and camcorder (5x digital zoom, auto focus and video capture with sound), Windows Media Player 10 Mobile for listening to music or watching videos, and support for Sprint’s Sprint TV live and on-demand television content.