Verizon phones for email

[gregulator]

Ok, I have no alliance to any company, and generally I am not an Apple person, but F%^! Would someone please tell Verizon to get a good phone? I am sure people on here will rave about one thing or another about why the iPhone is amazing, or why it sucks, but lets be honest, the UI blows everything else out of the water. I have used a BB Curve and it SUCKS for web browsing and is okay for email. The scroll ball is kind of neat, but SUCKS compared to using your fingers on a larger screen to navigate around. What I want (order of importance):

1) Good voice quality (it is a cell phone after all. Oh wait, ALL cell phones suck as telephones which leads me to my next point...)
2) Good web/email (if I cannot get good voice service, at lease give me an awesome email interface that is intuitive and useful. Also let me browse the web!)
3) Signal (what good is a device without a signal around the Nation?)
4) All the other crap. I don't really care about a camera, it is more of a novelty, and I hate picture messages. Music, don't care that much either.

Are there any Verizon phones like this, or on the horizon? I like their coverage, but the phones just eat doodoo in comparison. Or does someone need to link me to a place where i can cancel my contract and just get the iPhone (I have a $200 gift card to Apple that I have not used in 3 years!)?

Oh, and I am not psyched about the price of the iPhone plan. I spend $45 a month right now for voice and am not psyched about jumping to $80 a month. Any alternative, or are all data plans bum-penetrators?

 

[pm]

I don't know Verizon much.

I do know that the Blackberry Thunder is the Blackberry answer to the iPhone, and it's launching soon. Rumors say Oct. or Nov. but no one knows for sure. It will launch on Verizon.

http://www.intomobile.com/2008...to-verizon-launch.html

So that's a thought.

As far as the iPhone, I like mine but I don't rave (too much) about it. It's got a nice UI. But, the voice quality is only ok (I hear it's better on the 3G iPhone), and it's signal quality is only ok too (I hear it's still not great on the 3G either). I can whip out a long list of things that I don't like about it... When I see something better, I'll jump ship like a Sprint-stockholder.

As far as data plans... you can get an "original iPhone" and use it on T-Mobile with any voice plan + a data plan. A lot of people are using it with the $6 T-Zones data plan, and it works fine I hear (google iPhone T-Mobile Tzones). The $6 plan is not intended as a data plan so there's an ethical issue there... I have an older 550 minute + unlimited night & weekend shared plan with mhy wife for $50 plus $20 for data. So $70 for the two of us. On T-Mobile, you can take any voice plan and add $20 (or $6) to it to get the data plan. So, $30 + $20 (or $6) is the cheapest (300 minutes, unlimited weekends). But you'd need an original iPhone... and they still aren't cheap on Ebay.

I think no matter what you decide, data plans are expensive... and the carriers like it that way. The only cheap one is the T-Mobile T-Zones option... and that's fairly ethically challenged in my opinion. I'd be really surprised if Verizon doesn't tie the Thunder (or Storm, or whatever it will be called) to an expensive data plan too.

 

[imported_sgtbe]

My wife has the blackberry (pearl) something 8130, works pretty good.

 

[DivideBYZero]

I think you should wait for the 'next' BlackBerry device or get a current model, such as the Pearl 8130 or Curve 8330.

 

[UNCjigga]

BlackBerry Storm will hopefully launch in November, and will probably have the best touchscreen (clickscreen) available on any Verizon phone at the very least (if not better than the iPhone). I believe the HTC Touch Diamond is launching late September/early October (Sprint got a headstart). If you like the convenience of a real QWERTY keyboard, the HTC Touch Pro gives you that and should come late October/early November. Both HTC devices have GPS, WiFi and a "real" Opera web browser. The BlackBerry browser usually leaves much to be desired--it'll be interesting to see what's new on Storm. Unfortunately, blogs are now saying that Storm will not have WiFi. There are also some new WinMo devices from Samsung headed to Verizon, check the blogs.