An American Lion

Motorola Razor Phone

I hate to get all common and low with you, but my Verizon cellular telephone sucks. It is an old Razor phone, and when it came time to upgrade, I went, naturally, to my local Verizon store and began perusing their products.

Already knowing that I could not get a BlackBerry--I wouldn't get anything done, and it's too small for my hand anyway--I expected to find a phone with some nice features and a great deal.

Instead, I had the salesman treat me like a clown. He derided the Razor I had, told me I was in a plan they didn't offer anymore, and if I left the plan that I was on, I was a fool, basically.

Well, no sale there. I will probably switch carriers--this phone is worthless in most places--but I don't have the stomach to go through two hours of retail hell. I'm not the only one who realizes that the products that Verizon offers are crap. People in the industry have certainly had that opinion for a while now:

Verizon gets plaudits for its coverage and call quality, but consistently loses out to AT&T, T-Mobile and even Sprint when it comes to getting the newest high-end handsets.

"They lack the star products that their competitors have," says Avi Greengart, research director, consumer devices for Current Analysis. "They recognize they don't have compelling devices right now but feel they can make up for it with network quality."

Case in point: Last week when Motorola co-CEO Sanjay Jha proudly showed off the company's much-talked about first Android phone, the Cliq, he had his arms rather awkwardly around T-Mobile executive Cole Brodman.

"We never considered another carrier for this phone," Jha told Wired.com.

The Cliq, a coup for T-Mobile, reinforces the new pecking order among wireless carriers. With the iPhone 3G and 3G S, AT&T is now at the top of the pack in its ability to attract new customers based willing to switch to the carrier's network.

Sprint and T-Mobile are trying to catch up: Sprint launched the Palm Pre on its network in June and plans to introduce the HTC Hero later this year. And T-Mobile has carved out a niche as an Android-specialist with last year's launch of the first Android phone (the G1), the HTC myTouch earlier this year and now with the Moto Cliq.

As for Verizon? The company has the popular but critically panned BlackBerry Storm and the rather staid and Wi-Fi-less BlackBerry Tour. The carrier known for the best network now has the least attractive line up of smart phones.

I'd like to think that I'm smart, but, apparently, I'm not. I tried the BlackBerry, even though I doubted I was going to get one, and I couldn't figure it out. Every time I started going through the menus, I couldn't figure out how to advance it and look at what I wanted to look at. Frustrated, and completely ignored by the Verizon store staff, which seemed to be more intent on staring at their own phones and sitting on their dead asses doing nothing while people waited for help, I held off making a move.

Verizon, my review of your product is this: you get nothing. You're not even worth getting excited about. The sooner you realize that your products are garbage, the better.