neurological dryer lint

so i've been using the RAZR for about a month now. how is it, you ask? so far this easily stacks up as the best phone i've ever owned - it's not just hype, a pretty brushed metal face.

setup was a breeze, including pairing it with my PC via bluetooth to send and receive files, as well as pairing it with the motorola HS810 bluetooth headset that it came with. my old nokia 3600 didn't have the ability to bulk-save contacts to the SIM before i swapped it to the new phone, which meant entering all of them manually into the RAZR. i could have sent them one at a time via bluetooth between the phones... but that would have taken twice as long as keying them in, thanks to the nokia's dumb interface.

the interface continues to have motorola's silly quirks... for example, you can't skip straight to a particular ring style (e.g. silent, loud, vibe + ring) without flipping the phone open - while closed, you have to scroll through them and then select it by hitting a button... problem is that button still makes a noise, which is reeally loud and annoying. so it's not perfect. finding things isn't difficult in the menus, and they're very configurable as has been the case with motorola's phones in the past few years. it still looks cheap and 8-bit - nowhere near as sophisticated-looking as nokia's symbianOS.

physically it's well put together, not too light or too heavy. i'm still marveled by how thin it is. the button layout is sweet and while the pad is flat, there's a satisfying click when you press one, unlike, say, a microwave's flat panel buttons. the external LCD is capable of showing off all of the same information as the main LCD while the phone is closed, which is another very thoughtful and cleverly designed element.

the built in mini-USB is a fantastic touch - no more proprietary cables, just plugged it into the one sitting on my desk and windows found it as a USB modem right away. i wish it had IR or the ability to plug in a physical headset in case my bluetooth set's battery dies (which it took a month to do amazinly enough).

speaking of battery life - this doesn't suffer the typical motorola curse - i regularly get 3-4 days out of a charge. they did a lot to work on that, shutting off backlights and the main LCD after very short periods of time.

the camera is pretty good, VGA-quality, same as my nokia's was, a little less colorful it seems. and i wish the phone came with better games - why can't a phone just come with tetris by default? i'd pay $5 extra.

besides the small stuff, though, it's a great phone and motorola has me back as a devoted customer.

on an unrelated note - i enjoyed jim dandy's new restaurant for the first time today. big jim's has long proffered tasty ribs / chicken / pulled pork to the starved-factory-worker masses on the corner of sharon and mosteller in sharonville, and recently opened a storefront operation a half-block down the street.

man, is that some tender chicken.

sauce was a little watery and not very spicy, very vinegary, but pretty good overall. i'm hyped to try the ribs. good cornbread, too, and according to b, the mac & cheese was tasty. i hope it becomes a regular spot for lunch. the people are friendly... it feels like you're eating lunch on your friend's back porch. highly recommended.