Bit-Shift.Net

I've been a increasingly less satisfied customer of Verizon Wireless for just over a year now. My main gripe with Verizon is their lack of coverage in areas where all my friends had good to excellent service (this went both ways, but usually ended up on the non-Verizon side). The biggest frustration was when I started snowboarding. Verizon has HORRIBLE service at Mt Hood Meadows. Case in point: I had become separated and was trying to contact my compatriots one very clear and sunny day at the mountain. I figured I'd get really good reception if I went as high as I could, which just so happens to be Cascade Express. So there I stand with miles of visibility and pretty good signal reception showing on the phone, granted it was analog signal but hey... I dialed the number and hit send, then I waited. Silence... After about 5 seconds the phone would beep loudly and display an error simple stating call failed. What the hell...I turn off the phone and turn it back on. Try again, same result. Then I fiddle with the roaming options, again no dice. At this point I was getting pretty frustrated and decided that I'd had enough.

I have a friend with T-Mobile and she is the only person I snowboard with that consistently gets good service at the mountain so I decided to give them a try. And sure enough, first day on the mountain with my new phone during a pretty heavy snowfall I get a call. Sweet!! Its from a pet grooming shop saying my dog is ready to pick up. Thats great, but I don't own a dog. Oh Well. My new phone works at the mountain, mission accomplished.

Oh ya, which phone did I buy you ask? The Samsung t-809. This phone hit store shelves around the second week of December and from the reading I did on various cell phones on sites such as Gizmodo and Engadget, everyone was in agreement that this phone was awesome and they were all going to buy it when it became available. They were right. The screen on this phone is absolutely gorgeous. Paired with the 1.3MegaPixel camera makes for some pretty decent phone pictures. The phone also supports Micro SD cards. If you haven't seen them, they fit on the tip of our finger. The phone also has bluetooth support, quad band GSM, SMS, MMS, and a host of other features. And did I mention the screen is amazing!

Check out more specs here.