Well alrighty then. I ordered a Motorola Droid Razr Maxx today. It was only $199 at Radio Shack -- $100 less than I was seeing last week, so I figured I needed to jump. And after having to nurse the battery of my old phone this weekend while the power was out, I figured it made sense to pay for the extra battery life.

It fits in my current bento box (the LG Gel Box 2), but with not much room for other things. I am going to look into the LG Gel Box Plus. I can't find any dimensions for it online except for "40 cubic inches," which doesn't tell me if it's long enough. I had to cancel my planned trip to the LBS this weekend due to the storm (they still have no power, two days later), but soon I'll head out there to get more info and hopefully buy it.

Anyway. I'm oddly not happy about my purchase. All the press reviews are great, customer reviews are also very good, though there are some potential problems that I read about. I just really would rather not need a new phone right now. I like the user interface of the Droid Incredible and was happy with most things about it. I just don't like having to go through the apps that I can't uninstall to constantly delete data from them. I also resent the forced obsolescence in this product category.

And then there's the change in Verizon's calling plans -- I'm now paying the same amount of money for limited data that I paid for unlimited data before. And they charge a $30 "upgrade fee" even though I'm not really upgrading anything. It's like they want you to be unhappy by the time the purchase experience is over.

I did spend some time playing with the new phone today -- I had to go to Verizon Wireless to do that, but they're located in the same shopping center as the Radio Shack, so it was easy enough. It got hot pretty fast, which I hope is not typical. I was able to type some texts, enter data into the address book, do some google searches, take some pictures, etc., to get a feel for the phone. It will take time to get used to the different interface, but I hope it will be okay.

Anyway, the new phone should arrive in a few days, though it may be Friday or Saturday before I have time to take it to Radio Shack to activate it.

Meanwhile, I guess I will have to re-download the apps that I like on the old phone when I activate the new phone. I could try storing them all on the sd card and using the same card in the new phone, but I don't know if that will work. Switching from one brand to another, I assume there will be some incompatibilities. They say they can transfer my photos and videos to the new phone, but I think it's easier to just transfer them to my pc and let them live there. Most of them are already on the pc already.

I'll post my thoughts on the new phone when I've had a chance to put it through its paces, in case anyone else is thinking of buying it or a similar Motorola model.

The adventure continues...