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Before you plunk down your hard-earned money for a smartphone, you've got some tough choices to make, and not just about deciding between the Windows Mobile, Palm, or Symbian operating systems. You also have to consider the design of the device—do you go with one that squeezes a keyboard into a conventional phone's vertical orientation, or do you forgo that familiar and convenient layout for the more spacious keyboard of a horizontal slider?

That's one choice you don't have to make with the AT&T Pantech Duo C180. This inexpensive ($199) dual-slider device aims to straddle the line between lifestyle phone and serious business tool, which it manages to accomplish for the most part.

The Pantech Duo runs Windows Mobile 6 Standard and is a quad-band GSM device that includes UTMS/HSDPA data support, so it will work with AT&T's 3G network. If 3G hasn't made it to your area yet you can fall back to relatively pokey EDGE support, but that will be the only fallback option since the Duo lacks Wi-Fi. Although not everyone needs Wi-Fi, we think it should be a standard feature in a phone of this type and price.

The first thing you notice about the Duo is its diminutive footprint, if not size. It weighs but 3.9 ounces and measures a scant 4 x 2 when closed, and while the .83 inch thickness is high, it's not surprising considering the three-layer design. The Duo also projects a fairly stylish look as it's clad in glossy charcoal colored plastic with a faux steel accent around a bright and vibrant 2.2-inch screen. The display is not a touch screen, and thus the Duo lacks a stylus.

The Duo's battery is rated for 3 hours talk time and 10 days on standby, and those estimates seem to jibe with our experience; we got more than three days out of a charge with moderate usage. For what it's worth, getting the battery in and out is a cinch probably because there is no separate battery cover to remove first.

Other than when inserting the SIM card, you won't have to venture behind the battery because the Duo's microSD slot-which can accommodate up to a 2GB card—is conveniently located on the top edge of the device. (You'll probably need to slide the phone vertically to open the slot's protective door though, especially if you lack any fingernails to speak of.) The Duo's built in memory is 64MB.

Below the screen are the standard array of controls consisting of send and end, a pair of soft keys, plus home and back buttons. There's an additional button to call up the profile list and which when held down will lock the phone.

Sliding the Duo up exposes the large twelve button numeric keypad. Unfortunately, the keys are made of the exact same glossy plastic as the rest of the phone, the texture of which does little to keep your fingers from sliding around while you dial.

When you slide the Duo's face to the right, the full QWERTY keyboard is revealed. These keys have a better feel, but with no curvature and very little space in between they also lack a good tactile feel, particularly for quick thumb typing.

Switching the phone between its vertical and horizontal orientations is easy-perhaps a bit too easy in the latter case. On a couple of occasions we inadvertently did a partial slide while gripping the phone with one hand. Although the Duo's display is not small for a device of this size, it can feel a bit cramped when using the phone in landscape mode.

We found the Duo's call audio quality to be very good, and that includes the speakerphone which is quite clear and loud.

The Duo's offers the voice command feature built into Windows Mobile, which you can use to display contacts or dial phone numbers directly. You can also open some of the Duo's major applications by voice command, but not all of them-many of our attempts were met by a nonplussed response from the Duo, and you can't prerecord your own voice tags for specific applications.