[treebound]

Hi,
My first post here, so here's goes....

I'm looking to get my first smartphone and have probably narrowed it down to the 8330 Curve. We've currently got two non-data phones with USCellular. I've been shopping around and pricing plans and options, one company has a buy one get one free on the Blackberrys, another has one for $8.88, another was priced at $24.99, USCellular is currently at $149.99 minus a $70 mail-in rebate. Wife doesn't want to change carriers and putting me on a different carrier will more than double out monthly fees, so I'm probably going to stay with USC.... and add a data plan. Bummer, wish they had a better price, but increasing our fees $25/mo instead of $90/mo makes up for the difference in a few months.

On with the questions:

A couple of our local storefronts for USC are out of the 8330's with no idea of when new stock will arrive. When I look at the USC web site it says the 8330's are currently unavailable (at least earlier today it did), so would it be a good assumption that a system/phone update is about to happen? Or is the low availability due to the new phone models about to be released. Or is that other company's 2for1 deal taking all the excess inventory from the factory? Thoughts?

Second question: I've heard various comments about the USC browser accessing the internet, is that just a setup issue or is there really a difference in the web browser experience between different carriers?

I'll probably have more questions but these will do for now. So, howdy, I'll go find the FAQ's now.

[Trimix]

Welcome to the forums.

I'm going to attempt the second question. The USC browser may be able to access the internet but the browser tends to be less sophisticated than a normal BlackBerry browser. They are designed mainly for regular cell phones that still want to get online.

[BeefyBeefo]

Wirelessly posted (VZW 8330)

You can't convince the wife to switch carriers and get a family plan with another carrier?

-Jeff-

[treebound]

Nope, no go, switching carriers would entail getting some relatives and friends to switch as well, free minutes for us would end up costing them extra minutes where now it's all in-network free minutes. We're talking lots of minutes here, so no go.

I did visit several local stores today and dug a little deeper, near as I can figure from what I was told is that either USCC or RIM is installing new chips of some sort. Apparently the entire state here is in short supply, at least for my carrier. I got put on a couple of waiting lists and a small shipment is due in hopefully next week sometime.

Thanks for the comments and the welcome.

While waiting for a phone to come in I'm going to start shopping around for an 8gb SD card and maybe a carry case secure enough for bicycling and motorcycling use.

[BeefyBeefo]

Wirelessly posted (VZW 8330)

Great deals can be had for the SD cards, just do a little searching around. My curve has taken some big falls in its' SEIDIO Innocase. The phone is perfect, but I can't say as much about the case that I replaced.



-Jeff-