[ifonline]

Yesterday afternoon I picked up a 9930 from Verizon on a new account. I raced back to the office and immediately updated the OS to 7.0.0.362 and then connected the device to Exchange. Once that completed, I added some other e-mail accounts and started checking out the phone. The battery didn't last all that long as I never charged it when I got it back to the office, so I didn't get much time with it before I had to plug it in. I let it sit overnight to charge.

This morning I got the phone and swapped it with my iPhone for my daily routine, although I still have the iPhone with me because I haven't (yet) ported my telephone number. I started my day by adding music to the 9930 and then got ready for work. While getting ready, I listened to music on the phone. Good sound (for a phone) and easy to navigate/shuffle my music. Worked as well for my purposes as the iPhone does.

Before I left the house, I connected my phone to my car and added a few phone book entries to the car (the car keeps a separate phone book for each phone connected). I hit the road and tested the phone. Caller ID didn't work quite right, as I expected (based on how the 9700 worked in the car). I turned off smart dialing on the phone and Caller ID worked properly at that point. Nice. Call quality through the car seemed good. The phone switched from 3G to 1x (something or other), but I'm new to Verizon so I don't know what that means. I need to read up on that in a bit.

Once I got to work I decided to set up my notification profile. Once I finished that, I start sending e-mails to myself to test the connection. The e-mail came through quickly, as expected, and the notification profile worked. Nice. I then began checking out the phone.

The first thing I have noticed is that the touchscreen coupled with the keyboard really makes for an excellent device, and I'm quickly getting used to using the touchscreen, the trackpad, and/or the keyboard depending on what I'm trying to accomplish. This is the device I had always wanted, and I'm thrilled to see that it works well for me.

It's not all roses, unfortunately. I have this feeling that WiFi isn't terribly strong on the device, although I haven't completely ruled out router issues at this point. I'm going to keep an eye on WiFi performance over the next week or so to see what happens. Additionally, I haven't formed an opinion yet regarding Verizon's coverage, although it looks like AT&T might have better coverage at my house. Again, a bit too early to call it, so I will keep an eye on this as well.

So there you have it. Roughly 24 hours with the phone and so far, so good (overall). I'm still deciding if I should stick with Verizon (which is starting to look like it will be more expensive per month for me) or stick with AT&T (which is slow to get the 9900 released). Decisions, decisions.