Thursday, July 31, 2008

Video test from phone

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The saga of the Dare

I've been after a new phone since my 3rd Motorola Q9m went out on me. The Windows software on it was ok, but I broke three of those darn devices doing nothing more than simply using them for what they were intended to do (email and phone calls).

Sometime around February I shut mine down for the final time, and went back to my RAZR. I sold the Q on Ebay and hit the Verizon store. My upgrade date was in three months and I wanted to find out what the new hotness was so I could be ready to order it first thing in July. I zeroed in on the Samsung Glyde sometime in June, and started counting down the days.

A week before my upgrade was available, I went to the Verizon store in Factoria to do one last demo of the phone I wanted, when the salesman offered to show me the LG Dare. Instantly, this was my new favorite phone ever. They weren't going to go on sale until a few days later, but my upgrade date wasn't for a week anyway, so I was golden. This would be my new phone.

I started reading forum posts, early reviews and watching youtube videos. Through these, I realized the Glyde was nowhere near as good as the Dare, and the Dare rivaled the iPhone in features. I got even more excited about it. A (very slow) week went by while I waited for my upgrade date. When that glorious day finally came, I was ready...cash in hand, but the phone was not available for my upgrade yet. I waited some more.

On July 25th, I headed down to Zach and Amy's wedding. Turns out my younger sister Juniper had the Dare. She had just upgraded a week earlier and while she "wasn't sure whether to get this one or not", she liked it so far. I proceeded to be jealous of her for having my awesome phone and not even appreciating how awesome it was. When I got back from California, I started calling Verizon stores all over the area. None of them had a Dare I could buy for my upgrade. Either they were only selling them to new contracts or they were out. I searched Craigslist, but the only people selling the Dare on that site wanted way over retail for it. I finally found an "authorized reseller" that was willing to sell me one for the full purchase price (409.99) and drove down there. This was July 30th....a full 18 days after my upgrade date.

I bought the phone, verified that I could return it if there was ever a problem (even though they're not officially Verizon) and walked out to my car. I opened it up, right there in the car...too excited to wait until I got home. To my dismay, it was a used phone. Fingerprints all over the screen and opened plastic packaging inside told the tale. I went in and returned it. I wanted the phone bad, but not bad enough to use one someone else returned for God-knows-why.

The next day...Heather sent me the following picture message on my phone with the text: "You owe me big!"



She had apparently gone to one of the stores I'd already tried and used her charms to get me the phone I'd been after for a month. She had purchased it for me already, so by the time I met her for lunch, she had it ready for me to pick up. It was even activated. Needless to say, it's awesome...and my RAZR has finally been retired from active duty.

I finally have a phone that does email properly (work and home), browses the web well, takes pretty nice pictures and actually works well as a phone. I'm sure something else will come out in a month that I'm going to want more (Blackberry Thunder is the current one I'm curious about) but for now...this is the best phone I've ever used.