that geeky dude

So, Verizon came out with a whole new version of their popular Chocolate phones. Since my new every two came up last week, I decided to upgrade.

The phone came via FedEx on Thursday, I charged it up, activated it and copied over my phonebook. Here’s my review based on four days with the phone.

The phone is exceedingly more usable than the previous generation vx8500. The outer keys are no longer the send/end keys, rather being the speakerphone toggle/clear key, along with two soft keys and an iPod like scrollwheel/directional button with OK in the middle. The keypad automatically locks when on a call, which you can unlock either with the slide toggle on the side, or pressing “ok” twice. The outer buttons also give you a vibrate feedback (which you can turn off) and you can change the sensitivity of the buttons so you don’t constantly try to press them when trying to navigate the menus (as those of us with fat fingers tend to do)

The phone came with VZNavigator preinstalled, which is a nice touch. It even comes free with my upgraded “premium” plan which also includes unlimited pix/flix/txt messaging and mobile email. VZNavigator works as well as can be expected, given the fact that the “GPS” on the phone is really a triangulated location based on your distance from the closest three cellular towers and not a real GPS chip. It gets you to your destination, which is really all that matters.

The camera is passable at 1.3 megapixels, but it’s not easy to take self-portraits, since it has no external screen, just a mirror, and no camera button on the side of the phone. Photo quality and options are good, but some of the options are trumped by the new Razr “Maxx” which has an autofocus button and a photo editor built in to the phone.

Texting is relatively painless, with a much improved T9Word dictionary for predictive text. One of my problems with Verizon’s network has always been the speed of their email gateway. If I send a message to an email address, it takes (usually) more than an hour, and the same applies when emailing my phone. A minor quibble, since I can log on to my Yahoo! mail from the phone for free now and it uses Yahoo’s servers.

Ringtones (and Ringback) tones are still a ripoff at $2.99 US per tone, and they don’t make it easy to get ringtones on the phone without going through their system. I’ve ordered a data cable off of eBay, which along with BitPim should simplify the process.

The phone is what I would consider “pretty” (perhaps “cool looking” would be more masculine?), but there are a few quibbles. The red LEDs behind the external keys and scroll wheel clash with the dark blue of the rest of the phone. The shell is also a fingerprint magnet, and scratch prone to boot. Since I didn’t purchase a case/clip for it, I’ve already gotten some small scratches on the display. I’ll have to buy a holster soon.

Call quality doesn’t differ much from my old vx8100. Speakerphone quality is much, much higher. I haven’t had a chance to pair it with a Bluetooth device yet, but I’m planning on getting the Motorola HT820 Bluetooth Stereo Headset soon, along with a couple of Kingston 2GB microSD cards to store music on. My whole reasoning behind this phone was to supplant my dependancy on my ipod. There’s even an accessory for the headset jack to plug it into the AUX jack on my car stereo to listen to music from my phone in the car.

Battery life so far is leaving a lot to be desired. It only comes with an 800mAh Li-Ion battery. I’m going to get the extended battery next month and pray that it will last longer than the current short-timer does.

My final verdict on the phone is 3.5/5 stars. Dings for the fingerprint prone surface, easily scratched screen and short battery life. Plusses for appearance, call/camera quality and ease of use.