After casting off the Droid I went with the HTC Touch Pro 2 on Verizon Wireless. Overall I like it better FOR MY PURPOSES but not everyone will. Neighbor Jim of Qualcomm likes his & reports a software upgrade was released after I flung mine back to poor Franco at Imagineering Wireless. It's been reliable and still far from perfect - some of that is WinMo 6.5's fault (I wonder when M$ will get with the decade and get past the Windows OS emulation and become more hip - Lord knows they've got enough competition to show them the way).

This smartphone has one of the biggest screens in the biggest and sports a nice slide-out keypad. It runs Windows Mobile 6.5 which seems, to me, to be a step backward from 6.1. It's reasonbly light and is rounder and less cold-steel than the Droid which might attract more of the ladies. Call quality is good and I've had no calls dropped where I would not expect to have them dropped. It's not as hip as a Droid or as business oriented as a Blackberry but for me it's the best overall smartphone in Verizon's stable at this moment. It uses a Qualcomm 7600 CPU and 288MB or RAM. The 512MB (1/2 GB) of flash memory (which is equivalent in function to the hard drive on your PC) is too small in my opinion and for an extra $10 they could have included a cupla-gigs on an outboard flash drive as Droid does. It includes WiFi, Bluetooth, a stereo headphone jack (unlike the Omnia which required an external adaptor) and a SIM chip so you can use your phone overseas.

The screen is clear and in some apps like outlook I can accurately point to insert the cursor w/my big thumbs. Most of the time it's very difficult to select text by touching then dragging over text. Omnia and Treo were easier. There IS a "Select Text" Menu option that causes the scrolling to suspend and text is now selectable very easily. But, if I can do it, with some hassle, without that menu choice, why have 2 degrees of difficulty? Also, the touch-and-hold menu offering Copy & Paste should also offer "Select Text" if this option is truly necessary.

The tilt screen is a great idea partly because I put my index fingers behind the screen and now the keyboard is very secure in my hands. But the numbers are so close to the screen bottom edge that I must wedge my thumbs in there to hit the keys!  I often wind up hitting the row below the numb3rs when using the tilt screen.

The keypad has a better feel than Droid's. I think @ and comma are important enough to get their own keys. I would be glad to press FN twice to switch to the SYMbol options, thus freeing up 1 key.  The Mailbox or Favorites keys could be the other, with the 2 pf them being on the same key. Unlike Droid, the xt9 word suggestion feature does work with the keypad - you enable it via the tiny keyboard icon at the bottom of the screen. I have yet to determine how to make it unlearn incorrect spellings it learned from yours truly.

Unlike Droid, having none, the Touch Pro 2 has 2 programmable functions. I put Voice Command (which i use for dialing exclusively) on the Long Press of the SEND key. On the FAVORITE keypad key, I put Today (i.e. The Desktop). On the exasperating Omnia Ialso had CAMERA and TASK SWITCHER programmed. Ssems like theres lots of room for another button on the side. This is the first phone in the last 4 that I've owned with no convenient camera button. If I witnessed an auto accident it looks like I'd have to go thru the menus to Camera before I could shoot pix as a witness.

Outlook integration is better than Droid and includes Tasks. WinMo 6.5 has gone BACK a step: when a Task alert happens I can only DISMISS or Snooze. Where is the ertswhile option to snooze for various time periods?

My Voyager Bluetooth headset does not get the Voice Command lady and the button on it sometimes fails to initiate dialing & never hangs up. It workede fine on my Omnia.

Sometimes, after working w/ email, calendar & tasks, I go to TODAY and the phone jumps to Contacts. Close Contacts & it opens again. Doesnt happen if the keyboard is slid away. It's like something keeps pressure on the CONTACTS soft key.

Scrolling of email & inbox list is not "on rollers" like in Opera. Frictiony and jerky, sometimes a 5 sec delay. If there is a scroll sensitivity control I have not found it. Sometimes mails render slowly. Is this unit underpowered?

Likewise, delays with Voice Command dialing, and sometimes i have to say YES twice, make me think the cpu is slow.

It comes with HTC's own TouchFlo3D interface which does, really, dumb little things like letting you swish emails out of their envelopes. I dontl use this interface. Why cant I see more info in touchflo3d? I like the tf3d scroll bar and desktop but I cant see most appts, # tasks, # emails like in Today. Let me configure it!

Some of the complaints are Windows Mobile's faults:

WinMo bitches:

*More sort options for Tasks. Let me check more than one category. Let me put items due soonest at top of list. In lieu of this I will create a Today category to use for filtering.
*seems like winmo is behind other MoSes re screen nav and gestures
*needs tags or flags for emails so u can mark as read and still remember to read them, at the office.

This phone got top reviews from Consumer Reports. Am I just asking too much?  Please post your comments on your Touch Pro 2 experience.