Bibliotrek

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First-world prob­lems, I know.

Begin­ning tomor­row, I’m eli­gi­ble to upgrade my Ver­i­zon phone. I’m think­ing of get­ting a smart­phone, but I can’t decide whether I should or not. On the plus side, they are shiny and I have wanted one for ages, and they’re so con­ve­nient, and I could really use a Map func­tion, not to men­tion access to the inter­net any­where and apps and Gmail and all of the other things that make smart­phones so amazing.

On the minus side, the monthly plan is expen­sive. That may only be one minus to a whole list of pros, but I am not sure that I am will­ing to make the sac­ri­fices I would have to make to afford the extra cost each month.

But: look how shiny the HTC Droid Eris is! I played with it in the Ver­i­zon store a cou­ple of days ago and really liked it. I loved the seven home screens, and I found the vir­tual key­board sur­pris­ingly sat­is­fy­ing, more so than the iPhone’s, even. I’m look­ing at the Eris over the Motorola Droid mostly because the Eris is $120 cheaper, but also because I like its design bet­ter, espe­cially the Sense UI upgrades to the Android inter­face. Also, I hear Android 2.0 is being rolled out to the Eris, which means Google Maps Navigation!

How­ever, I also hear rumors that the iPhone is com­ing to Ver­i­zon later this year. So do I hold out for the iPhone? It has a num­ber of perks when com­pared to Android phones in gen­eral and the Eris in par­tic­u­lar — a much larger app store, for one — but I am philo­soph­i­cally opposed to Apple’s iron-fisted con­trol over their apps, whereas the Android mar­ket is more free.

I don’t know, Bib­lio­philes. Some­one advise me!