As virtually anyone who’s met with me in the last eight months or so knows, I’m not happy with my Motorola V710 phone. Not happy’s actually a fairly serious understatement; I loathe this phone. It’s become a running joke with some of the people I meet with often; soon as I take it out they’ll put their hands up and ask me not to complain about it. Coming off of a long string of Nokias – both TDMA and GSM – my experience with phones had been steadily increasing battery life and simple UI’s.
Now while it’s perhaps not entirely fair to judge the Motorola in ease of use terms – because its capabilities far outstrip what I used to have – it’s still a poorly designed phone, IMO. Beyond the usability, the battery life is poor, the thing is too big, the antenna’s flimsy, and the first one I got broke almost immediately.
Throw in the fact that Verizon, in their infinite wisdow, decided to cripple the Bluetooth (which I knew and unfortunately persuaded myself not to get hung up on), rendering it useless for the sorts of file transfer, remote dialin purposes, etc one might typically use Bluetooth for and this hasn’t been my best purchase ever.
And speaking of Verizon, these guys are unbelievable. I’ll acknowledge up front that their network – the reason I switched – is excellent. Apart from the fact that it doesn’t reach into my loft (not their fault, it’s the concrete), some terrible service back home in Maine, and some lag in receiving voicemails, it’s great. Coverage most everywhere I go, even up into the Rockies. That’s the good news.
The bad news? International calling – something I had with AT&T and then Cingular, at about 8 cents a minute to the UK – is apparently unavailable until I’ve been a customer for a year. That, or I pay a $500 dollar up front deposit. Oh, and the rates? I was quoted 65 cents a minute to the UK on plan. After getting a manager on the phone, and explaining that this was a work phone on a work account, and that I needed the ability to call the UK – an ability I’d had w/ AT&T – I was told that they’d work something out. That was about two months ago, and today? You guessed it: still no international dialing.
Then there’s EV-DO, the high speed network I thought I’d soon be able to take advantage of as a Verizon customer. Well, rollout’s been slower than I expected, as it’s far from nationwide in its coverage at the moment.
As for phones, it’s not really any comparison. Verizon’s phones, as even Verizon’s most ardent defenders are forced to admit, are nothing to write home about. They got the ever popular Treo’s a year or so after Cingular had them, and still don’t have an equivalent of Motorola’s chic RAZR models. So while their network’s been a strength, their selection of handsets is not.
Anyway, that’s enough ranting from me; I’ll probably be switching back to Cingular at the end of the year – or before, if it really drives me nuts. But in the meantime, I thought that some of you contemplating the switch I made might benefit from the above info.
