AT& who and Verizon what?

There's been a whole lot of mudslinging between T-Mobile, Verizon and AT&T. Who's got the bigger map? Who has the better 3G service? Who has the cheaper family plan? Well, here are some tips when it comes to phone shopping.

1. Price.

After a name change T-Mobile began in 2002. By now everyone should know that it's the inexpensive phone service of the four major companies. Verizon and AT&T tend to be pricier and Sprint is a bit in between.

2. Cool Phones

By far the coolest phone is the iPhone. But hey, that's just my opinion and that of most Americans. But the coolest phones overall are coming from Verizon. They came out with the Chocolate, the Droid, the Storm and other HTC phones. T-Mobile tries, but some of the phones need to go back to the drawing board.

3. Phone Service

Verizon is known for their great phone service. I mean after all their "Can you hear me now" commercials, they better had. T-Mobile is not so great when traveling around. AT&T calls drop faster than a hot potato.

4. 3G

Apparently, AT&T is the only phone service with a true 3G network. I've definitely been annoyed when I've been on a conference call and wanted to hop on the net on my phone, but couldn't. If I had an iPhone, that would definitely be tons of fun. Though it would be great to go on the net without any problems, unlike my T-Mobile Shadow.

So, if you want a cheap phone and don't care too much about getting a signal everywhere, then T-Mobile is right for you. If you love and have to have the iPhone or want to call and surf the net, then it's AT&T for you. If you want a cool non-iPhone phone, great phone and customer service, then it's Verizon for you. No phone service is going to have everything that everyone wants, but they can get close to it.

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Smartphone Shuffle

When the T-Mobile G1 (HTC Dream) phone came out back in Oct 2008, I was excited. T-Mobile was finally making a smartphone comparative to the iPhone at a reasonable cost. It runs on the Android OS, has a qwerty keypad and touch screen, syncs with your Google account, has a nice sized screen and does so much more. I counted the months when my contract would end, so that I could upgrade the phone for a cheaper price. I was even shopping around online for phone charms and snazzy HTC Dream faceplate covers.

Well, my contract ended a month ago and I still haven't brought. The main reason is that if I did buy it, the data plan with everything else included would bring my monthly payment to about $100. I'm not even working yet, so paying that much for a phone and the monthly plan is outrageous to me.

The other reason I haven't brought it yet is that it's already a year and three months old. The HTC Dream has already been updated to the G2 phone aka the myTouch and I'm not impressed. I like the idea of having both the qwerty keypad and a touch, and the ability to slide it up. They keep talking about how you can personalize the phone. Really... Can't you do that with any phone? You can change the faceplate cover, the home screen, etc. So really, there's nothing amazing about it.

I'm totally lost and can't seem to decide. I have yet to find a phone that has everything I'm looking for. The HTC Touch Pro 2 seemed like an awesome choice but it doesn't have an expandable SD slot. I'd be stuck with the limited RAM on the phone that definitely isn't enough. Anyone else have this dilemma or have a phone suggestion that would work better?
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