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I would love a Prada II from LG, purely for the slidey keyboard and the capacitative touch screen but its mega mega expensive.

I love my LG Dare, and I've had good luck - even the full-length touch-screen crystal has proved remarkably durable - but I know you have a hang-up about touch-screens.

Yeah, that's the big problem, all the really really nice touch screen ones are really freakin expensive. Thus why I save way ahead of time for it. Then again, I'm in a contract for 2 years.

mines a 2 year contract. I have a Nokia 5310, which is beginning to get a little unresponsive and slow. besides, i hate it. And I want a touch screen.

Mikey: looks really nice. Except for it not being a european product. it looks kinda like the Viewty only much thinner.

Yeah, it basically is, except, IIRC the viewty has a better camera and a keyboard, I think.

And looks uglier. That is a remarkably nice phone. The viewty is pretty cheap over here, we consider it a bit past it now. But I know someone who is incredibly pleased with theirs.

The Dare isn't a true mobile OS device, so it won't replace a true smartphone or PDA - but the full HTML browser is nice, as is the mobile e-mail which can be keyed to any number of addresses and has automatic sign-in. The touch screen is nice, too, because it can be re-centered to your particular habits of thumb use.

I believe it's a good phone based on what I've read. But I really don't know about it without being able to actually use it.

People said the same about the LG cookie, look what happened to that. Currently, I am leaning toward the LG GW520, but it depends how good the operating system is. I want to see if i can negotiate with my parents to get a unlimited montly data usage bolt on slapped onto my contract so i can use the 3G component.

The GW520 looks to be a nice phone, it also looks like it has a fairly nice sized keypad, check something like a cnet review or something, as I have no information on it, because it isn't sold in America, so no information is really available.

It isnt on there. to be fair, the LG GW520 is so new here, that not even LG UK has a profile of it. Theres no real way to tell just how good it actually is but reviews seem pretty positive. Its on Orange too, which has been the best network of the lot so far for me.

Ah, well, then I can't really help. I can only look at reviewed phones, especially when they are only available in the UK

Like Mikey, I also own the LG Dare. It is a nice looking phone indeed; I don't text a whole lot (I still don't have a huge number of people to text with...) so I may not be the best judge but I have gotten the messages out. Also, as Mikey said, it does seem pretty durable: I've thus far left mine without a case or screen protector and it still looks just about as good as new, however many bumps it's taken. It is my de facto camera right now, doing an acceptable job.

Oh, and it does calls well enough too - I like to use my bluetooth headset, which works flawlessly with this phone.

What's that new one with the Google Android OS?

I'm going to the Orange shop in Fareham on saturday to have a look. We're also gonna look around to see if we can get a short demo of using them.

The google OS ones aer the Google G1, HTC Hero and HTC Magic.