Lovin’ my LG Dare

So a couple of weeks ago I traded my Motorola Razr for an LG Dare (VX9700).  Suh-weet.  It’s a touch screen phone with all the toys — micro SD card memory slot, 3.2 megapixel camera with auto focus, video, flash (kind of), MP3 capability, full HTML web browser, accelerometer for detecting screen orientation, you name it.  Of course the coolest part is the whole touch screen thing; it’s nice having a huge LCD that for the most part does what you want it to do.  The fact that it’s supported by BitPim makes it even more usable.

It does have a few shortcomings, but they’re minor and geeky.  I can’t send a wallpaper as a pix message, for whatever stupid reason.  Handling of MP3 playlists — well, it’s buggy as a roach motel, and basically unusable with anything I’ve tried (Windows Media Player, Rhapsody, or just transferring files in USB mode).  The web browser is a little lacking, but usable for the occasional gotta-have access.  It’s got handwriting regocnition, but like the Palm you’ve got to learn the oddball way of entering text to use it — and no, of course it’s not the same method the Palm used.  Still, though, it’s really nice to be able to turn the sucker on its side and see the QWERTY keyboard pop up on the touch sensitive LCD!  I can even type with my thumbs, making text messaging super easy.

All in all, I’m happy with it.  I’m looking for hacks to be able to change the theme and do some of the other little things that you presently can’t do, for whatever reason.  Support on the web seems to be pretty good, and there are a lot of people hacking away at it — so I’m sure things will continue to get better.