I was waiting for my cell phone contract to be up for renewal, and had been pining away waiting to get my iPhone. The one huge dread for me was coverage. All I seemed to hear in the press and tech shows was how many problems people had making calls. I was ready to live with this at some point, because I so very much wanted an iPhone. As an application developer, I knew I would use many applications on it and want to learn more.

But then 2 things happened that changed my mind.

1- Consumer Reports. I very much trust this organization. They ranked AT&T dead last in customer satisfaction. I could take bad, I could even take "last" from someone else. But "last on Consumer Reports"? That got my attention.

2- I walked into an Apple store and a Verizon store on the same day and tried out both phones. I still like the iPhone look and feel better, but the Droid was "right up there" with features, ease of use, and functionality. The Google integration was far better than the iPhone. And the Droid had Verizon's network which I already had been using for years.

Conclusion: iPhone and Droid are neck and neck as phone-gadget-thingies. But Droid is better at being... a phone, if only because of the network. Apple needs to get out of the exclusive with AT&T or it'll be limited to the market it has today.