You know I agree that his gripe is legitimate. However, he seemed to have a lot of hostility and I was addressing that things had changed. I was trying to look at this from a different angle.

I honestly believe that if he'd looked for a Chocolate Touch in December, but by February came in and found the phone had been replaces with a Chocolate Touch 2 which required data, he would have simply looked for something else after accepting the fact that the phone he wanted two months ago is no longer made.

As far as I see it, the change is almost as if the same model sold three months ago were replaced with new ones. I never had nearly the same level of gripe when we went from HTC XV6800 to HTC Touch Pro, or other instances where the new model came with new data requirements.

For the sake of argument, I'm going to call the current phone categories, "Good, Better, Best:" basically, Simple, 3G Multimedia, 3G Smartphone.

If Verizon had at least one of everything in each category, I think this conversation would be drastically different. What I think gets most of us is that it looks as if Verizon is tell us that if we want a certain format, we're going to have to pay for it.

If they had a touchscreen, a 1.3 MPixel flip, and a couple full-keyboard phones in the "Good" (simple) category, as well as some computer-syncable phones in the "Better" category, we'd feel a lot less screwed. Spread the technology a bit more, and people would have better choice. They could chose a decent but simple phone, or chose something more functional but with a $10 data plan in the Better category, or go for the gusto in the Best category.

I think the biggest problem with the current categories and data requirements is that the phone selection feels a lot like Verizon is choosing your phone and situation for you. If that were corrected, we could move forward