Sunday, May 15, 2011

Verizon Wireless: waiting for 4G LTE smartphone or Godot.

Verizon Wireless is up to its old tricks: late to market, overpriced. confusing.  The only thing it has is the best network.  If ATT and T-Mobile merge and wipe out that network advantage Verizon Wireless is in big trouble.

Yesterday I received an e-mail message from Verizon Wireless announcing its second 4G LTE smartphone: Samsung Droid Charge.

The first 4G LTE smartphone was the HTC Thunderbolt for $250, which I considered shockingly expensive enough for me to pass.  Also, it does not have a dual core processor.  Thunderbolt has bad battery life.

The Samsung Droid Charge has all that and costs $50 more: THREE HUNDRED DOLLARS!

What the heck?  Is Verizon Wireless nuts?  I'll pass again even though my Motorola Droid continues to do very odd stuff: screen goes wild and unresponsive, on the soft portrait keyboard the keys on the right edge do not work properly, freezes.  I really need to update except:

1. While Verizon Wireless indicates that I may upgrade now, Verizon Wireless will give a better unspecified deal if I wait until early July.  I purchased my Motorola Droid in November 2009.

2. The Motorola Bionic seems to have been cancelled and replaced by something called the Targa, which may go on sale in late summer ... 2011, I think.  There's also the idea of a Verizon Wireless version of the Motorola Atrix, which was released a few months ago by ATT Wireless.

And there are rumors that a new iPhone5 4G LTE will arrive, maybe in October,

Waiting for Godot is much simpler than waiting for Verizon Wireless.