Tikkabik

Wanting to take advantage of some of the holiday weekend deals cell phone carriers offered, Bonnie and I got her a new phone over the weekend -- an LG VX9900 (the "enV") through Verizon Wireless.

The VX9900 won out because it has a full keyboard (it's a "candybar" style phone that opens up in the middle, revealing a full QWERTY keyboard and larger screen). We were drawn to it because the device has really remarkable battery life, and it's multimedia compatible.

It's a fine phone, but some of the limitations that Verizon places on wireless customers who use their phones for e-mail and multimedia are making me rethink the purchase, and with 30 days to back out, I very well may.

Verizon is incredibly restrictive about what you can put on the phone. They want a piece of anything you stick there. You can't import ringtones, you can't even import contact information from a PDA. In fact, Verizon wants to charge an extra $20 a month for the privilege (its "wireless sync" feature), which isn't Mac-compatible. Neither is their music syncing software, but she has an iPod, so that's not a huge issue.

I'd not really forgotten about this from my own Verizon experience, but I'd just sort of put it out of my head, I guess, and it's all coming back with a vengeance now.

Now I'm looking hard at AT&T packages. They have a refurbished Palm 750 -- a Treo that runs Windows Mobile -- that I may go with instead. Doesn't look like I'll save anything on the data and voice plan, but them's the breaks, I guess.

The iPhone would be a home run if it were less expensive. $400 is just too much for us to justify on spending on her for a phone -- about $100, maybe $150, if the phone was really compelling, would be the absolute top end.

I hate this.