HTC Evo Shift 4G

it's pretty good i think. is the nexus s outside of your budget? love that phone

CNET gave the phone 4 out of 5 stars, which is pretty good. I think it's pretty thick, though, and the keyboard looks a little too tacky for my taste.

Well, if that happens this time just come back here and we'll show you how to root it.

i hate the evo.

In case you still have not made a decision or someone else finds this thread, I just got one of these phones and so far I've had no problems. I believe it is the same phone as the Evo Shift 4G but it has a slideout keyboard and a little bit smaller screen. I really like the slideout keyboard - the buttons feel great and work well, which I was worried about. One of my only gripes with the phone is that it's kind of difficult to actually slide the keyboard out because of the shape of the phone and angles of the sides - I constantly hit stuff on the screen by accident when I'm sliding out the keyboard and I'm always afraid that because I have to apply pressure in opposite directions from opposite sides when sliding out the keyboard that I'm accidentally going fling the phone at the ground or something. Hasn't happened yet and I'm getting better at sliding out the keyboard. I haven't had a droid or any smartphone before and so far I'm okay with it. The only other gripe I have with the phone is that I don't really like the predictive text - I was much faster with the keyboard on my previous phone or predictive text with a regular number pad. I will probably get better at it though, or else I will root and use different software for predictive text (if that's possible).

You can also turn it off with menu>settings>Language & keyboard>Touch Input>Touch Settings>Prediction. Though I got used to it on my Xperia right quick even though it annoyed me at first.