Samsung Intensity II (deep gray, Verizon Wireless)

Pros: User-configurable display can be made easy to read (though it isn't straight out of the box); shortcut keys on the QWERTY keyboard allow quick punctuation and proper grammar; no mandatory data contract (which should be illegal anyway).

Cons: Expected a bigger step-up in quality from my pay-as-you-go freebie; dropped a call in the first few hours of use; crowded number pad makes it easy to mis-dial.

Summary: A lot of people are saying things about this phone like, "Well, it's okay for your teenaged daughter, but it really doesn't have a lot of pop," which is all fine and good if you're prepared to shell-out ten bucks a month or more for a data subscription, but I for one find the whole practice of requiring such subscriptions not only valueless for me, personally, but deeply, deeply, DEEPLY odious.

Ruling-out all such phones leaves a person with a tiny handful of remaining choices (presumably at some point in the near future there won't be any choices at all), and of those choices this phone seemed to be the most ruggedly built of the QWERTY-keyboard offerings in the Verizon store.

Of course you can't actually use the phone in the Verizon store, so there was no way to tell any number of things about this phone -- or any other -- before buying, another odious practice that should garner more consumer outrage than it does, but I have to say that for all the frustrations I've had with the top-mounted headphone jack, the fiddly little number pad, and the occasionally inflexible interfaces, with the amount of texting I do with my phone, it's still a big upgrade not to have to hit the 4-key three times to make an "L," or whatever.

THERE IS ONE MAJOR DRAWBACK that you should know about, at least as far as I'm concerned: This phone doesn't sort your text messages into an "inbox" and a "sent folder," the way my free phone did, but instead displays the last message of each "conversation," regardless of who sent it. And friends, I really, really, *really* hate that -- because it causes me to glance at a screen full of text messages and, at least momentarily, not know which ones are from me and which ones are *to* me, from someone else. A really dopey design choice that cannot be overridden by the user.

Also, all the neato stuff that you'll be told this phone can do (downloadable ringtones, mp3-player, blah blah blah)? Well, guess what: You have to pay extra to enable each of THOSE, too.

Bottom-line: If you're a Verizon customer who wants a phone with no mandatory data subscription and including a QWERTY keyboard, you're getting this or the similarly-priced LG, which doesn't get any better reviews, anyway. So much for the customer always being right, and all that jazz, huh?

Updated on Dec 7, 2010

Thanks to the two folks who wrote replies to my review, explaining that the text-messages can, in fact, be sorted traditionally. Now if only there was a way to shut down the annoying add-on offers I'm suddenly getting after every call?

Updated on Apr 22, 2011

UPDATE: I am now less than a year into my two-year contract with this phone, and frankly it's a small wonder that I haven't stomped it flat in a parking lot. Both the headphone jack and the USB charging port have started intermittently not working, and the keypad lock only works when I don't want it to, as in when receiving a call -- when it freezes up and causes me to answer the call without actually being able to speak to the person on the other end. The number buttons on the outside keypad are way too small, and tilted in such a way as to seemingly *encourage* misdials. The text messaging keypad freezes if I receive a text while composing one at the same time, and the phone periodically drops calls even when I've got good bars. Right now I'm searching on-line auctions for an out-of-pocket replacement. Would go back and give this pone ZERO STARS.