As much as I like the XV6700 as a PDA, it’s not a very good cell phone. It’s hard to hear when you’re outside and it has a nasty habit of dropping incoming calls. It works better in an EVDO area (Verizon’s high speed data network), but it still is not as polished a phone as it is a PDA. The proverbial straw was the fact it refused to play nicely with the BMW Bluetooth setup in my new X5. It was still hard to hear other folks and they all said they couldn’t hear me very well. So I took Verizon up on the offer for an upgrade from my old V710 to a new Motorola Razr (V3m).

The Razr is very light, has large, easy to push keys, and most importantly for my aging eyes, it’s easy to read. No problems dialing now. It’s on the list of supported BMW Bluetooth phones, so it paired right up with the system in my car and works perfectly. Now I can hear folks and they can hear me loud and clear. It has a mini-SD card (TransFlash) tucked away behind the battery, so I can store images from the camera on it and retrieve them later. Some folks don’t like the location of the mini-SD, but I think it’s a big improvement over the SD card in my VX6700, which is spring loaded into the top of the phone and will eject forcefully if push at the wrong time. There’s no chance of accidentally losing the mini-SD in the Razr. And surprisingly enough for a cell phone, it even takes pretty decent pictures. 😎