I have finally liberated myself from Verizon Wireless, and all I can say is, huzzah. Or something like that but with less of an 18th century feel to it.

My reasons for jumping ship were pretty basic. I was tired of calls not coming through when I was driving. I'm not sure if it was the phone or Verizon's network, but when people called me while I was driving about half the time the car wouldn't go through. The other reason was a lack of phones manufactured since the year 2000.

So I switched over to Cingular. The plan is cheaper, I get more minutes, and the minutes rollover from month to month. Which is really a great concept, I am paying for the minutes, why shouldn't I be able to keep them if I don't use them all?

Phonewise I picked up a Siemens S56. For $50 ($100 with a $50 mail in rebate) it just can't be beat. It has voice command, Bluetooth, IrDA, and just about everything else. You can't find a single Verizon phone that has *any* of those features (with the exceptions of the PDA/Phone combos). It has a full featured email client, which is just about useless on a cellular phone, and it will sync with your organizer on the desktop, which is far more useful than you might think.

So far, so good. The next hurdle is getting the PDA onto the internet via bluetooth...