I've had an Aria for about nine months. I originally went to it because I wanted a phone that would fit in my pocket, which it does nicely.
The phone functions fairly well, with a couple of drawbacks.
- It is under powered. If you try to use Google navigation while driving, it just thrashes. It will tell you to turn five to ten seconds after you are through the intersection.
- The camera sucks
- There is no flash for the camera (see above, The camera sucks)
- For email with the stock firmware, it works fine for my Google apps accounts but it has one very annoying trait for my work Exchange account. When an email comes in, it gives you a notification every minute until you read the email . In the firmware that comes on the phone, there is no way of changing that setting.
- Also for Exchange with the stock firmware, if I am at home attached to WiFi then leave the house without manually shutting down the WiFi, ActiveSync will not work. It just gets connection errors until you disable WiFi. Very annoying.
To try to address some of the issues above I tried
HTC Aria | CyanogenMod on the phone. It addressed some of the basic issues. But, I think I will start looking for something else. Even though I am not a big Apple fan, I have been considering an iPhone4.
BTW, I am on a Premier plan with AT&T from my IBM days. I can get an iPhone 3GS for $19. But, I'm thinking an iPhone 4 (or possibly 5) may be the way to go.