Well, with Palm devices, you could do a "hot sync" to back up your device files on your computer, and to install new files and apps onto the device.
My phone account doesn't have data capability (just phone and text), and I assume that a wi-fi download would still require being able to access the Internet, so it'd have to be the USB cable or the memory-card transfer.
Now, I'm also looking at Windows phones, but I'd assume that USB or memory card would work there, too.