Okay, so I've been to two stores that carry Verizon now in the past week, and generally I come off feeling irritated by the experience, and the VerizonWireless site isn't helping much either in my quest.
Basically, I'm up for a new-every-two phone and I'm willing to pay this time, as I got the free cheap Samsung flip phone two years ago and it has no features.. I don't think it even has Git-R-Now or Mobile Web, heh, but I've never tried.
I think who I am and how I'm going to use the phone are important here, but in the store I was generally sold towards what I'd call a 'stereotype'. Yes, I'm a college student, but I don't do a lot of texting. I don't want/need a music player phone or live TV or mobile web or anything else under a V-name that they want to push on me in the store. Even a camera seems a little unneeded in my case. (I own an iPod, I've got a digital camera, I carry my laptop everywhere, no need to replace those..)
More important than being a college student, I'm a software developer/consultant (mostly high-throughput computing solutions, but that's a complicated explanation) and I travel around a lot. I live in SE Wisconsin and in any given weekend, I may be flying out to either coast or taking a train down to Chicago, driving up to Milwaukee or Madison, etc. I use my phone to keep in touch with my family, friends, and my clients / business contacts, and so I do a lot of talking (burning through a 1400-minute plan, but haven't gone over yet). It would be nice to have a phone that can go a whole day with lots of talking and no need to charge it, but most of the 'fancy' new phones only claim a few hours of talk time, which really turns me off.
The only reason I can see myself texting a lot is if I decide at some point to have Twitter delivered to my phone or some other fun little web service. Otherwise, txt messages are fairly useless to me. Since I travel a lot and it's not always easy to find Wifi for my laptop, it'd be nice to able to do EV-DO on my laptop at some point in the future through this new phone, even though I'm not going to be getting their EVDO plan yet. EVDO is nice and fast though, because I've tried it on others' laptops (and my laptop lacks either of the slots to get the modem, anyways)
So from looking online and in the stores, my two choices come down to smallest, lightest, best looking, and longest talk time w/ Bluetooth and EVDO capabilities. The two phones I'm looking at are the Moto KRZR and the LG Chocolate. I'm not too sure if I want a flip phone again, but I didn't really like the Chocolate's size or touch-sensitive buttons either. The Chocolate also has an embarassingly short talk time, I'm told, even with an extended battery.
[Edit: The only reason I can come up with to go with one phone over the other is that I've read here on HoFo and elsewhere online is that Moto/Verizon completely locked down the bluetooth capabilities of all the Moto phones and you're sort of stuck with that Get It Now walled-garden, which I'm not interested in. (Nor am I interested in VCast or paying for anything else, but you knew that) Being able to stick a few mp3's on a memory card and have it use those as ringtones (even though I use vibe-ringer 99.99% of the time right now) would be kind of nice. Bluetooth shouldn't be crippled but it seems to be a 'feature' on Verizon. It has to play nice with my selection of bluetooth-capable Macs, too, so that's kind of difficult.]
Basically, I'm up for a new-every-two phone and I'm willing to pay this time, as I got the free cheap Samsung flip phone two years ago and it has no features.. I don't think it even has Git-R-Now or Mobile Web, heh, but I've never tried.
I think who I am and how I'm going to use the phone are important here, but in the store I was generally sold towards what I'd call a 'stereotype'. Yes, I'm a college student, but I don't do a lot of texting. I don't want/need a music player phone or live TV or mobile web or anything else under a V-name that they want to push on me in the store. Even a camera seems a little unneeded in my case. (I own an iPod, I've got a digital camera, I carry my laptop everywhere, no need to replace those..)
More important than being a college student, I'm a software developer/consultant (mostly high-throughput computing solutions, but that's a complicated explanation) and I travel around a lot. I live in SE Wisconsin and in any given weekend, I may be flying out to either coast or taking a train down to Chicago, driving up to Milwaukee or Madison, etc. I use my phone to keep in touch with my family, friends, and my clients / business contacts, and so I do a lot of talking (burning through a 1400-minute plan, but haven't gone over yet). It would be nice to have a phone that can go a whole day with lots of talking and no need to charge it, but most of the 'fancy' new phones only claim a few hours of talk time, which really turns me off.
The only reason I can see myself texting a lot is if I decide at some point to have Twitter delivered to my phone or some other fun little web service. Otherwise, txt messages are fairly useless to me. Since I travel a lot and it's not always easy to find Wifi for my laptop, it'd be nice to able to do EV-DO on my laptop at some point in the future through this new phone, even though I'm not going to be getting their EVDO plan yet. EVDO is nice and fast though, because I've tried it on others' laptops (and my laptop lacks either of the slots to get the modem, anyways)
So from looking online and in the stores, my two choices come down to smallest, lightest, best looking, and longest talk time w/ Bluetooth and EVDO capabilities. The two phones I'm looking at are the Moto KRZR and the LG Chocolate. I'm not too sure if I want a flip phone again, but I didn't really like the Chocolate's size or touch-sensitive buttons either. The Chocolate also has an embarassingly short talk time, I'm told, even with an extended battery.
[Edit: The only reason I can come up with to go with one phone over the other is that I've read here on HoFo and elsewhere online is that Moto/Verizon completely locked down the bluetooth capabilities of all the Moto phones and you're sort of stuck with that Get It Now walled-garden, which I'm not interested in. (Nor am I interested in VCast or paying for anything else, but you knew that) Being able to stick a few mp3's on a memory card and have it use those as ringtones (even though I use vibe-ringer 99.99% of the time right now) would be kind of nice. Bluetooth shouldn't be crippled but it seems to be a 'feature' on Verizon. It has to play nice with my selection of bluetooth-capable Macs, too, so that's kind of difficult.]