My Verizon “new every two” thing keeps showing up in my mail in recent months — I think it started last year sometime, but I’ve been resisting.

However, the BlueAnt V1 is coming out soon! And I have been helping to test the tech in them at work* (and may eventually get one), so it is a pain for me not to have a Bluetooth-enabled phone. Thus, I’m finally going to give into the desire to get a new phone.

The only question is: what phone?

I am not getting a Blackberry because they are too expensive for data, and I really don’t need one.

(I am not getting an iPhone for a multitude of reasons, not least that I would have to switch carriers. My objections to the iPhone are really a whole other entry, and not very interesting.)

So that left me with the options of upgrading to other phones within Verizon. I decided I would rather stick with LG because although their phones have certain quirks, I am used to them.

So today I looked at the Dare, the enV2, and the basic VX8350, which is essentially just a modernized, Bluetooth-capable version of my current phone (the VX6100).

So:
1) Stay with the same kind of phone and plan
2) Upgrade a bit, QWERTY keyboard & camera w/higher resolution, same plan
3) Major upgrade plus web data plan

The LG Dare is basically Verizon’s iPhone, though there are a lot of differences. It’s touchscreen only, but not capacitative (wtf?). It also has a 3MP camera (…almost as many MP as my large 2002 digicam!) and full web browser (which is the part of the Blackberry function I would actually like, though the quality of the rendering engine gets mediocre reviews). It’s also really new, and I’m worried about it having weird flaws (user reviews of the Voyager, the previous all-touch phone, suggest the touch screen may not be that great).

The enV2 doesn’t have a true web browser or as good a camera (CNet says mediocre) but evidently is sturdy and has good sound quality and a good keyboard.

The VX8350 has some neat features, like being able to be a USB mass-storage device and transferring files via Bluetooth. Photo quality is said to be good but MP is only 1.3.

All of them play music, which is kinda cool — I haven’t had a phone before that would do that — but may require some extra equipment to transfer files, which isn’t so cool. (None of them plays OGG, of course, but I didn’t expect a phone to do that.)

And they basically cost either $100, $50, or $0 (after contract credit + rebate). Kind of an interesting stack, that.

I’m going to think about it for a while longer, but right now I’m basically playing with the tradeoff of better camera & web/risky touchscreen & web contract expense vs. mediocre camera & no web/good quality keypad interface & no new contract expense. One thing that worries me is that I tend to knock my phones around a bit in my bags, and I’m worried about damaging the Dare. OTOH people keep iPhones in their pockets with no apparent ill effects, so maybe it isn’t really a problem.

*This blog should not be taken as representing the views of anyone other than me, certainly not my employer or any business the company works with.