I Tried to Leave

I posted on an old blog about my frustrations with Verizon Wireless. From crappified phones with fugly user interfaces, to disabling bluetooth, and their lack of interest when I wanted to replace my dead phone, I was convinced I was going to jump ship to Cingular. I tried, I really did. Unfortunately, Cingular tries to push 2-year contracts harder than VZW does. And their RAZR was uber old and still uber expensive for what it was. They finally released the new V3i, but it's a whopping 300 bones. No thanks.

So, I did what I never thought I would do: stay with Verizon. I cheated a little and bought a RAZR off of eBay that already had the latest leaked firmware (with OBEX enabled) that Verizon may or may not ever release officially. So now if I ever decide to actually take a picture with the lousy camera on the phone, at least I can just copy it to my computer instead of paying VZW 25 cents to email it to myself.

So far, it's not actually bad. Yes, the Verizon interface is horrible. But thank goodness for Google for making this phone actually useful. They let you build a mobile version of your Google start page. So now I have less of a reason to view Verizon's ugly built-in web browser pages. I may even switch my email over to Gmail permanently since I can check it right from that start page, instead of paying Verizon more money to use an email program every month. And I can now post to my Blogger page with the phone, should I ever chose to. All of this combined with the EV-DO speed, something I wouldn't get with Cingular, is pretty cool.

The best part of this whole deal is that I'm still out of my contract. I never bought a phone from Verizon so my contract wasn't extended, which means I'm not obligated to keep my service. I can still go whenver I want. So if Cingular ever gets their act together and releases 3G service in Rochester, or Apple gets around to releasing that iPhone next week, maybe I'll still punt on Verizon. But for now, it's good enough I guess.