I'm a total motorola guy. They seem to have the best reception and fewest dropped calls IMHO. I owned several Samsungs, Nokias, Sony, and Eriksons. They turned out to be "Remote answering machine retrival units".

The reception was so bad that often I was in analog roam and was charged .69 a minute- my digital phone was costing me more than my old analog phone!

But coverage varies so much- I am sure this is more an endemic problem to Boston. I also had a Sprint phone - Samsung. I couldn't keep a connection on I-95 for more than 2 minutes in a moving car.

I found one very helpful person at motorola. His name is Theo Kay at 800- 331-6456 ext 4372. He is a motorola supervisor (total guru) and hence gets all the complaints from subscribers around the country and he advised me about the differences in service plans and how many customers were having difficulty with various plans in various parts of the country.

His feelings were that the best coverage was offered by Verison and Att- with MCI merely a reseller for ATT. He said that the service with these two providers was good with him getting fewer complaints from ATT TDMA Motorola users on the California Coast and fewer complaints from the Islands and resort communities like Nantucket, Martha's Vineyard, Block Island , Fishers Island etc...and good hampton reception.

Verisons CDMA system allows you to manually "force the call to analog" to get a better signal in weak digital areas- and it will do this for you automatically as well like the other carriers but you do have a choice. Also with laptops and internet access the Verison was better.

He said the ATT call clarity was the best and dropped calls were fewer- though you can not force annalog calls nor use laptops as the network really wasn't able to have consistent service for data.

As for the phone upgrades he said it was best only to move up one generation from what the car originally came with to maximize the chances for a good interface.

Still he said that the TDMA phone you have is rare and was an alternative to the then dominant Analog network. It was only available for sale for a year and then discontinued. Any sources for these phones would be greatly appreciated!

I think the larger phone handsets are safer to use when driving- the new Motorola phone is narrow and places the buttons so close together that trying to dial the thing is akin to russian roulette when driving- even if there is no one on the road.