As pretty much the whole town knows by now, I loathe my current cell phone, a Motorola v710. Besides the intentionally crippled bluetooth, the battery life is poor, the menus are difficult to navigate, and it’s rather large for a phone with its limited capabilities. Nor am I blissfully happy w/ Verizon.
Over the past few months, as the 3G networks from Verizon (EV-DO) and Cingular’s (UMTS) have expanded and gotten off the ground, respectively, my needs have subtlely shifted. No longer am I content to have a phone that’s just a phone; I’m now in the market for a phone that will also serve as a modem to one of the 3G networks. And given that I’ve gotten Bluetooth working on my Linux installation, and that most providers’ dial-up software only supports Windows, I’m looking to be able to use the phone for Dial Up Networking (DUN) over Bluetooth, rather than an USB cable. Basically I want to be able to wirelessly dial out from the laptop over the phone, skipping the need for a separate and unwieldy PCMCIA style datacard.
On Verizon, my phone options are limited, and while they finally caved in to customer demand and now permit using the phone as a modem – AKA tethering – they do so, apparently, only over USB. Bluetooth is not allowed. After querying the always useful Howards Forums as to whether or not the same could be unofficially accomplished over Bluetooth, this poster at least believes that it can. In theory, anyway, I should be able to upgrade to a Motorola RAZR V3c, which has both Bluetooth and EV-DO, and use it to dial out. But I don’t much like Verizon, and I’m really not happy with Motorola at the moment so I was less keen on that.
It was a call to Pete who owns the Georgetown Country Store back in Maine, however, that may have sealed Verizon’s fate. A couple of months before the AT&T Wireless and Cingular merger, AT&T had put up a couple of brand new cell towers near my family’s place in Maine but they hadn’t been activated. After speaking with him this morning, however, it seems as if they’re now lit up, making Cingular the only carrier that would give me decent coverage should I be successful in my plan to spend a good part of the summer back in ME. So now the big question for me is whether I go ahead and get the currently available LG CU320, which has access to Cingular’s 3G UMTS network, or wait for an undetermined amount of time (30 days is the latest guess) for the Nokia 6282 (here they are compared, along with the V710).
At this point, I’m leaning towards waiting for the Nokia. But either way, it looks as if Verizon’s getting the boot.
