Whiny extremist muslims piss me off.

#42 The touch pro2 works. Only not for you.

Never noticed a lag scrolling that was worse than friend’s iPhones. I did notice that pages load slower than I’d like. I use an EVDO card for my laptop when I travel, and was hoping that mine would be more that speed than the iPhone speed. I hoped that the iPhone slow page loads were due to AT&Ts network, and Verizon’s near ubiquitous 3G would mean I wouldn’t suffer through that. Turns out phone browsers are just slower. Shouldn’t have surprised by that, I guess.

You can zoom with a simple double-tap, and the lower right of the screen will have a little mag glass + and – to allow zooming back out. I get the nifty feeling of pinch-zoom, but it’s no less functional – just less flashy.

Battery life — I don’t know many people who can go two full days of real use (i.e. not mostly standby) without recharging on a high powered smartphone with big screens, MP3 player, etc. Mine gets me to the end of the day handily, so I just plug it in each night. I suspect a lot of the people complaining didn’t come from another smartphone, and aren’t used to that reality — combine that with all the people constantly pulling out their toy to look things up because they can, map navigate to the corner store, etc…. I think the battery life is par for the industry. Removable battery does mean you can swap in a spare, and that’s the key for me when on the road. Heck, I carried a spare for my dumb-phone every time I hit the road.

I do agree charging seemed slower than I’d expect, at least when done via USB. Maybe from the wall socket it pushes more juice – I don’t know.

I recommend the power control widgit – lets you quickly see (and one-touch change) your WiFi, Bluetooth, GPS, and a few other settings. Turning off WiFi and GPS when you don’t need them probably has a big impact, and the widgit makes it easy. The setting screen that shows you what’s used the battery since the last charge seems helpful – need more time to tell how much so.

I’ve not played with a lot of apps yet. I find most apps to largely be a waste of time, but over time I’m sure I’ll adopt a few favs. The Nav process and GPS maps are handy. My hundreds of gmail contacts synced seamlessly — Brilliant. The gmail (mail and calendar) integration is excellent. I haven’t tried the normal mail client and I don’t use exchange.

As for downsides or dissapointments so far, only two.

#1 The keyboard is usable but truth be told I find myself having to take enough care that I’m about as fast with the onscreen keyboard in landscape mode. I often resort to using a fingernail instead of the pad of my finger to make sure I don’t hit the wrong button with my fat fingers. I’m splitting time 50-50 between them right now, and with no strong preference I would seriously consider a similar phone without the physical keyboard that would just be that much smaller, lighter, and less moving parts. (But I wasn’t about to wait for one!)

#2 – As widely reported via reviews, the camera is only so-so for a 5MP. I expected this to be better. It’s not visibly any better quality than the new iPhone as far as pictures to my eye (though I didn’t do side-by-sides of the same subject or anything.)

Overall – I’m quite happy with it so far, but it’s going to take awhile before I know how good it really is (or isn’t).

IT’S A TOOL. Use it.

S.

There’s a shot for that.