Looks like I should have peeked in this thread some time ago.
My first phone was the LG VX6100. That dates me a bit. From there, I lusted after the glorious LGG VX 9800 - The V. Finally got in on the LG VX9900 - the EnV. Then popped up to the LG VX10000 - The Voyager, commanded by Captain Janeway.
At some point after that, I finally joined the smartphone/android family with the Samsung Stratosphere, then, sometime in 2013ish, I upgraded to the Stratosphere 2... and until two days ago, that was the phone I still had. Yes, I was sporting a seven year old phone and wasn't that interested in upgrading, thus I did not think I had anything to add to or gain from this thread.
About two weeks ago, I found out from Verizon that they hate me and are retiring their CDMA network at the end of the year. This is going to slaughter many older phones, including my precious Stratosphere 2. So, I needed a new phone. It wasn't so much that I didn't *want* a new phone, but that all these newfangled phones are missing a feature I have come to love. If you're familiar with older phone models (or bothered to search the models listed above), you'll probably be able to guess what that feature is.
A physical QWERTY keyboard. At this point, pokepal has to be all "hey hey hey!"
Now, there's been a few attempts at physical keyboards since 2013 - but who tf wants a squished Blackberry keyboard? Go home, Blackberry. The Stratosphere 2 was the last decent smartphone with a keyboard. Ever since Steve Jobs came along with his vision of the future that included no buttons, every major cell phone manufacturer has been chasing the design of the iPhone, failing to realize or acknowledge that they'll never catch up with Apple's sales because, no matter how they design their phones, they won't have an Apple logo on them and Apple fans are second only to Nintendo fanatics when it comes to brand loyality. Instead of trying to cater to underserved niche markets, they're all just copying Apple and doing a **** job of it.
Enter f(x)tec and the Pro1. Now, I'm not ready to do a full review of this phone yet - I've had it two days and I have to decide what things are actual design issues versus what things are just "not the same as the phone I've had for seven years" (Seriously, why don't you have sticky shift key out of the box, phone?), but my initial impressions are very favorable.
The immediate downside is that the phone has an 8-12 week waiting period to get - and if some of the complaints on the forum are to be believed, some people have been waiting much longer. Thankfully, I scored a lovingly used phone from someone who got it and did not like it as much as they had hoped - I would have prefered a brand new one, but with Verizon killing my phone "by the end of the year" and their undependable shipping issues, I didn't want to leave it to chance.
tl:;dr pokepal, I'm on the f(x)tec Pro1 train.