I'm trying to find a good wireless email device/service for my wife. She doesn't need it to be a phone, in fact she'd probably prefer to have a seperate phone. It needs to have text input better than T9 (QWERTY keyboard preferred) and it needs to be able to retrieve from POP email accounts. T-Mobile doesn't work at our house and I'm not sure about Sprint. Verizon and ATT/Cingular are fine.

I thought I would be able to find a device for under $200 and service for around $25. It looks like I was wrong on that one. Blackberry was my first choice but plans seem to be at least $50. That's more then we are willing to pay.

I think Sprint's data plan is a $15 add on for the Treo 650. But I don't see a standalone data service for the Treo. The device is $310 after rebates from Amazon. This seems to be the best option but not ideal.

Cingular has a $20 data plan though I'm not clear whether that can be used with PDA phones and whether it requires a voice plan. They only have the Treo 600. They also have some new LG phone with a QWERTY keyboard but it's marketed for teens to do IM and it's not clear whether it has an email client. It claims to run Java but I don't think it's an open platform otherwise.

Am I missing something? I expected this to be an easy thing to find. But everything seems to be marketed at teens doing IM/SMS or if it is designed for email it is priced for corporate accounts. And, BTW, is it illegal or something for wireless providers to make good web sites?