They kept on sending me refurb units and I kept on having problems. The last one worked for about a month and then all of a sudden couldn't get a signal on my carrier or see any others which used the same bands. It could have been a network problem (with my account specifically) or a hardware problem, but I was sick of dealing with the shit so I said "Fuck it", ported my number out and got an HTC Desire Z for $0 on a one year contract.
It was a huge toss up. There weren't any Android devices I wanted on my carrier (Telus), and I didn't really want to make the jump to iPhone or BB. So, end of the day, the cheapest option which would lead to a usable phone ended up being switching carriers, buying out my contract, and signing on for a year. I had considered doing the same and getting a GalaxyS2, BUT it would have cost substantially more and I'd be locked into pretty much a three year contract in order to get any sort of reasonable discount on the phone. Outright was like $600, and on a three year it cost $165 or something PLUS the $200 odd to get out of the contract, or full price and unlock. Outright for the Desire Z was $499. It made the most sense and gives me an upgrade option ion 6-9 months.
That said, reasonable upgrade over the Droid/Milestone. Waaaay better keyboard, quite a bit faster, and far fewer bugs. The difference between first and second gen Android phones is amazing. The build quality is very good, but it doesn't have that same awesome feel as my old phone. The Droid/Milestone felt like you were holding a fucking gun: perfect weight, all metal and hard edges. Gorilla Glass and durable as hell. This still has a good weight to it, soft touch rubberized texture and brushed aluminum, but the rounded edges and such make it feel a bit plastic like and cheap coming off the Milestone. And I don't believe it has Gorilla glass.
Sense is great, and I may not even root/custom rom this bitch. It seems thats where a lot of bugs come in. Well, I'll probably root just to get the carrier-specific apps off there, but it seems a fair bit more complicated than on my last phone.
Oh, and the thing boots in like 5 seconds.
All in all, good deal. Kind of sad I had to switch carriers and give up around 10 years of loyalty and the bonuses that come with it, but since smartphones blew up, carriers had really been cutting back on the deals for their loyalty customers. I had about $35-40 of free features on my old account, but more min. than I really used since data plans and unlimited texts, and it was looking like a lot of those features would not be renewed for free. I pay slightly less now, with the sacrifice being later free periods by a few hours and roughly 100 min a month less. I think I can deal with that. Worst case, I upgrade the plan and get work to start paying for some of my bill.
