I leave my phone in the truck. I had an iphone, then a blackberry, and now I have a Droid. The ability to organize your calendar and receive email while you are out on the job is essential for keeping up to date.
If you are in an area with good At&t coverage, I don't believe an area actually exists, then the iPhone is the best thing on the market, followed closely by the droid on verizon. If you have to go with sprint, then the pre is a good option, but you'll have to get a car charger as the battery life on the pre is the worst of the three. The droid is nice because it will back up your calendar for free constantly onto the google cloud so you won't need to sync to save your data, you can do this with the iphone too but you'll need a mobile me account which'll cost you 100 bucks a year. The droid also gives you free turn by turn navigation integrated with google streetview which'll be helpful in finding jobs but most people have a gps already so that may be redundant. I'd stay away from blackberry as the learning curve on them is pretty steep and you have to sync back to your computer in order to backup your data.
In response to what others have said.
1)Don't get a blackberry through nextel, it's an Iden phone and won't use CDMA so you are completely stuck with nextel's aweful towers and can't take advantage of sprint cell signals.
2)Data is $30 with AT&T and Verizon. They can charge this because they offer better service than sprint and tmobile who offer all inclusive plans for much less but whose service isn't as strong and whose "IN" network is dwindling. You want a smartphone you can't avoid the extra cost.
3)If you aren't eligible for an upgrade, add a line to your account with verizon, get the droid at the reduced price, then switch it to your number, now you have an extra phone you can climb with and your droid can stay safe in your car. You'll pay 240 over the course of the 2 years you have to have the second line up and running but that mated with the 200 price of the phone is still cheaper than the 600 they would charge you "in contract"
4)The curve is by far the most durable of the smartphones out there, it is also the least capable as their apps don't get reviewed thoroughly and there is no central place to get them. Don't say BB world either, that software is absolutely terrible.
5)You can tether a blackberry to your laptop and surf off the data plan with no additional charges if you buy a $50 application. This could be huge because your laptop now has service everywhere your cell phone does. Tethering with an iphone is damn near impossible as AT&T is doing everything they can to stop this and tethering with the droid is possible but very difficult to set up and not really successful at this point (to my knowledge)
6)The camera on the droid has the highest resolution of any smart phone to date but it's waiting on a firmware upgrade for the auto focus, so until that comes out, the camera is comparable to an iphone or the pre.
Any more questions?
