My Palm didn’t have one. Neither does my BlackBerry. And it doesn’t look like the highly anticipated iPhone will either.
What don’t these handhelds have?
A USB port.
In fact, I don’t know of any handheld that has a USB port. (Of course, I’d be delighted to be proven wrong.)
Why do I care?
Well, sometimes, I have an real (air) or perceived (too-much-effort-required) gap between my laptop and some way of getting Internet connectivity.
For example, I may be at my cottage where my only option for Internet access is a 28.8 kb/s modem connection. Or, I may be at an airport, with only a few minutes before my flight departs, and my only option for Internet connectivity is a daily pass to some wireless service.
In these and other situations, I wish my BlackBerry had a USB connection. If it did, I’d have a painless way of moving data between my laptop and BlackBerry. In my cottage scenario I want to use my laptop to review, create or edit documents and my BlackBerry to transport them via email.
To some extent, I could achieve the desired outcome for the cottage scenario using the Bluetooth capabilities of my laptop and BlackBerry.
In addition to transferring data, I could use a USB-enabled BlackBerry to:
- Back up to the USB drive my data from my BlackBerry
- Update the O/S and/or applications on my BlackBerry
And this is just scraping the surface of possibilities …
So again, I ask: Why doesn’t my handheld have a USB port?
Ian Lumb's Blog 
Perhaps it’s all about form-factor …
Most of the time, I really wouldn’t want some USB-based appendage spoiling the look and feel of my (ultra-)compact handheld. After all, handheld providers have gone to some trouble to craft memory sticks that are small enough to fit inside my handheld …
My Blackberry Pearl has a mini-usb port through which it charges. When you plug it in to a computer using a cord similar to those that come with most digital cameras nowadays, it asks if you want it to show up as a mountable hard disk. I store stuff on the BB and sync my contacts/calendar this way.
I just purchased a usb mini male to usb A female converter hopefully to use a usb drive on my bb pearl…any ideas on how to have the bb power the flash drive so that it can read from it?