I recieved my new cell phone (!!) this past weekend and I’ve been getting acquainted with it. I ended up with the LG Dare on Verizon, passing up the iPhone (talked about it here) in favor of the significantly less expensive phone and plan from Verizon. I have 30 days to try it out and decided if I want to stick with Verizon or switch to AT&T.

So far I’ve established that it’s no iPhone but it’s pretty darn close. It’s very easy to use, has a nice camera and get’s decent reception. But it doesn’t have all the same features of the iPhone that I wanted, most notably the Apps store. It does have GPS navigation, something not yet available on the iPhone, that is very slick. It’s every bit as good as any dashboard GPS unit you can buy in my opinion and even gets traffic info.

The one item I was very excited about on the iPhone was the WordPress Application that allows you to post pictures straight from your phone to your blog. The Dare doesn’t have this feature but it’s also easy to email the pictures to yourself and post them when you get to your computer (did this with the Messiah picture below).

The iPhone’s web browser is probably slightly better than the Dare’s, but the Dare’s is pretty decent. It’s fairly easy to use and intuitive. I’d like to compare loading speed better the Dare and iPhone. Perhaps I’ll challenge my officemate’s iPhone to a test.

I’ve still got a few more days to decide if I want to keep the Dare or not but right now it’s looking likely. It’s 90% of what I wanted my next phone to do at 60% of the price.