How long have you had the phone?  Some stores only keep a day or two's worth of video, if nothing happens.  A week, at most, and then they record over what's been recorded before.  So, I wouldn't be relying on the video...

It makes me giggle to hear you worry about not having a phone for a week. I can't even remember the last time I actually charged my phone and took it with me somewhere. I'd guess the last time was in March when I went to Seattle.

AT&T sucks around these parts.  I will NEVER go to Verizon as their company is a bunch of flipping hiring idiots.  Sprint is horrid.  I finally settled on Alltel and I really for the most part like them.  I do drop calls occassionally when I am out at my house but I also live out in the middle of no where inside a building with concrete walls.  I can't expect too much.

Story on Verizon.  Verizon builds a huge call center here in Lincoln. My mom who has been doing customer service for 30+ years goes out there to see if she can get hired on.  Verizon is hiring over 300 employees or something like that.  They turn her down for the job but can't tell her why they turned her down.  Then one of her co workers at her current job shows up for work one day to put in her 2 weeks.  She got hired at Verizon.  Problem is...This co worker has only been doing customer service for a year and REALLY REALLY sucks at it.  She hung up on a customer one day.  And has been known to have an attitude with customers.  WTF?  Yep I won't ever use a verizon product.

Staci

I've been with verizon for two years and my biggest complaint is that you get specific times to get discounts on phones... you can't just use it whenever you want to... It seems when ever my discount comes out NOTHING is offered and i get stuck with some crappy phone that sucks and doesn't let me do anything -.- I'm more into the games, text video and pic part than just chatting away on the phone.

  amazing how much cell phones and service cost!

i have T-mobile. I have had them since 2001. i go through about 3 phones a year. usually i drop them or the dogs chew on them or well, hey i work at an animal shelter, things get broken quite easily around the workplace.  so i always go for the free or inexpensive phones. service is great. i even brought them a mangled chewed up cell phone which they replaced on the spot for no charge. as long as you have a contract or agree to extend your contract for a year if your contract is due to expire, there are no headaches. they have a great warranty and i've never had a problem with billing. and i've never spent much money on my bill or my phone.
money is tight, and i admit, i don't spend a lot of money on technical toys. i spend a lot of money on my "kids" (my animals). to spend $100 or so on a cell phone is outrageous to me. but thats me.

Lmbswimmer, you can send your pictures to your email!    Somehow, too, you can retrieve them from online picture account, but I totally forget how that's done.  I think they're automatically there, though, which is pretty scary, if you think about it.  One of my friends found this out the hard way.   

Net access?  No.  It's sent via a Txt msg.    I don't have VCAST on my phone.

See, I've got text ability (and use it ) - but I can't send piccies because I don't have internet.

Wow -- didn't know they could be THAT expensive without a plan.  I thought it was about 25-cents to send pix.  I think Verizon's method is the norm -- pictures are sent like text messages and charged like text messages.  I know people with Cingular/AT&T and Sprint and that's the way it works.  I did have a sprint phone before that simply was not capable of sending/receiving picture messages.  If someone sent me a picture message, it came as a text message with a web link.  Which was not helpful because that phone was not web-capable either.  But those were limitations of my specific phone, not Sprint.

When we got Verizon, we got the family plan with unlimited messaging.  We did that because I get a corporate discount off the monthly  plan, but not text/data packages. Since the messaging is built-in to the plan, I get my discount off the whole thing.   So it cost about the same per month to have unlimited messaging built into the plan as it would have to buy a cheaper plan and add the message bundles to each line.  And it applies to all lines on the plan, so if we ever get a phone for our son, that will have unlimited messaging as well.  Although the reality is we'd probably be fine with the cheapest message bundle on each line since 90% of our texting is between each other.

And Lmbswimmer -- hubby got the same phone.  He has been forbidden to test out its claims.  He's had a few technical issues with it and since they upgraded the software he occasionally gets an error that is only fixed by removing the battery.

I wish I had forbidden my hubby from testing his "military" phone. I got home two days after he had gotten it and it was sitting at the bottom of the fish tank. I was not amused (well maybe a little, but he will never know that). It did survive. It didn't how ever survive being slammed in the car door and ran over. Apparently it's indestructibility is limited if it is open. Now hubby is using an really old phone that doesn't have a battery cover and shuts off randomly. Every time he complains I remind him that it was his idea not to get insurance since the phone was "indestructible."

The phone states that it has to be closed to "survive".  However, there are some neat videos online showing the phone on speaker and working in water.  I have been tempted, but I have not purposefully done stupid things to the phone - yet...  Now, I am sure over the next year it will be tested to the extreme and I will get a lot of answers from accidental misuse.  

We also have a family plan, actually my parents in VT have the plan and added us to it, and we even get to have ME numbers which is cool.  We pay half the bill every month.  The reason why texting is so expensive is also because my dad has a special rate through his work for family plans and texting is not an option, so when/if they get sent they are expensive.  On occasion I will send a text message, but only to my friend Kurt since he is deaf and can't hear the phone

I do really like this phone so far, sure is heavy enough - probably can double as a weapon if needed The stop watch and the flashlight are the only "cool" features on the phone.  I may splurge one of these days and download a game or two for those boring wait times that occur.