I need to get a global phone from Verizon before I go to Berlin this summer, and found out last night that they approved an early upgrade for me.  I’m likely going to purchase it today, so that I can get going with setting it up and unlocking the SIM, but I need to decide which one to get.

It’s between the HTC Incredible 2, and the Motorola Droid 2 Global.

Help me decide!   Here are my thoughts:

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I have to admit I’ve been more than a bit skeptical of recent reports touting mobile video as The Next Big Thing.  Yes, it’s something a lot of people (especially younger people) seem to want, it’s a great use case for us mass-transit users, and with Moore’s Law apparently still in effect, current hardware can now support an excellent user experience.

My issue, though, is with the network.

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I was on vacation in Mexico several weeks ago (we’re fine, thanks), and couldn’t help but notice that the local carrier TelCel was able to deliver robust voice coverage in my hotel room situated halfway between Cancun and Belize – while back home, just across the river from Manhattan, AT&T seems unable to deliver voice coverage in all but one 4-ft. corner of my apartment.

Returning home to NYC and in need of a quick news fix, I tried using the NPR iPhone app on 23rd St. one day.  After one sentence, the data connection dropped.  I tried restarting the app – this time I heard two sentences before the connection dropped again.  I tried once more before giving up, recalling NAB president David Rehr’s recent prediction that 130 million mobile devices will be receiving mobile video by 2012 and wondering what the chances of that really were, given that getting even audio to an iPhone in Manhattan is such a hit-or-miss proposition.
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