[stonent]

I sort of wanted a moto droid now that I'm going to be porting over my phone to my wife's VZW account. Walmart has them for $19.99. I talked to her about it and she said that right now with money being tight (I pay a lot of my mom's bills because she has health problems) she doesn't think we could swing the $30 a month data plan.

So I do some searching and correct me if I'm wrong, but does VZW charge $30 for any kind of smart phone? My BB Flip on T-Mobile has data turned off and I just use it as a really nice flip phone and sync using desktop manager.

Are you aware of any phones on VZW that don't require a data plan that can still synch to Outlook in some way without having to buy third party software?

I'm also pretty much against most phones that have been "verizoned" or run all the BREW stuff. My wife has a fairly basic Moto phone right now and it is fully Verizoned and I don't really like it.

My wife is also due for an upgrade but she doesn't like full keyboard phones. So she said any phone that she gets she wants a standard phone keypad (I'm trying to see if I can at least get her interested in a side-slide style phone or one where the keyboard flips out)

Ideas?

My other option that my wife seemed to like the idea of, is to get a phone that doesn't require a data plan and she would buy me an iPod touch since 90% of the places I am during the day are wifi accessible and I could get my Outlook via ActiveSync.

[Sydman]

Short answer no not really. If I was going to get a new phone right now it would be the Casio Brigade, but that requires a 10 dollar data plan. Everything non smart phone has their same lame interface. So if you don't wanna pay for a data plan and don't want one that has been "verizoned" then I am not sure of an option for you. I have tried before trying to get away paying for data plan and getting away from BB's but I keep coming back.

[LunkHead]

They should have named that thing the Casio Tank... I wonder if it comes with a wheelbarrow to lug it around....

Kris

[Sydman]

Yeah. I went and checked it out at the store. The keyboard is REALLY nice, feels good and responds nice. But yeah its a big phone.