G'zOne; $300 (with service contract); www.verizonwireless.com
Jeffrey Davis, Assistant managing editor, Business 2.0
Finally, a mobile phone I can abuse without guilt. I've always made good use of the insurance coverage purchased with most phones. At least three of the gadgets have gone over the side of sailboats. One died after I left it on the roof of my car and drove off. And my toddler son took out two units--one with excessive drool, the other with excessive force.
So when Verizon came out last year with the G'zOne, one of the few water-and shock-resistant handsets sold in the U.S. market, I jumped at the chance to administer stress tests, including sidewalk drops (check) and dunks in San Francisco Bay (check).
Yet it's the unadvertised features that have made the G'zOne a keeper. The keyboard has none of the latency delays you get while thumbing most other phones. There's also an amazingly sharp color screen that pulls up a browser faster than any other device I've used, and a 2-megapixel camera (with flash) that takes real photos, not grainy fun-house shots. Lacking Bluetooth and a music player, the G'zOne is not a complete dream. But at least it'll get me through a two-year contract in one piece.
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