My SLVR arrived on Wednesday, and apart from some difficulty getting it activated, it's been virtually flawless.
Initial impressions: it's a nice, well-made phone- my worries about it feeling "cheaper" than the RAZR were unfounded. The iTunes/cell phone workflow I was so excited about does in fact work well. Battery life seems good after a few days of use. iTunes content transfer is pretty slow over the USB 1.x connection, but that was to be expected and not a deal-breaker.
The biggest gripe about the Motorola software- aside from its lack of a task/to-do list feature- is the fact that, by default, each phone number for each contact is listed as a separate entry (as mentioned by Forrest in a comment on my initial post about the SLVR). So one person with three phone numbers shows up as three entries.
However- and this was the case on the RAZR as well- this can be changed by going into the Address Book, hitting Menu, choosing Setup, and setting View to Primary Contacts (as opposed to All Contacts). Doing this only shows the "primary" phone number for each contact (which can be customized), and when you click on the contact, you can see the other numbers. Problem solved.
As for the flip vs. candy bar debate... it's close. In the end, flip phones provide an additional level of functionality over candy bar phones: the ability to auto-answer on open, the protection of having a lid, and the fact that there's no need to lock the keys. Plus, with the RAZR, the screen on the outside of the flip can be used to view the camera screen when taking self-portraits (not that I do that very often...).
So all things being equal, I'd probably opt for a flip phone. But the iTunes functionality on the SLVR is living up to my expectations and so far, I'm very happy.
On a side note, it was really convenient to jump from one phone to the next and not have to relearn a completely new interface. While the Motorola software is probably the worst cell phone interface I've used, I've become accustomed to it and had customized my RAZR pretty extensively (setting up one-touch dials on the SIM card, mapping shortcuts to certain menu options, remapping the soft keys, etc.).
I was able to reproduce all of my customizations within 10 minutes on the new SLVR, and I feel totally at home. This brings up an interesting point about usability: per Joel Spolsky, from
Usability in One Easy Step (First Draft): "Something is usable if it behaves exactly as expected."
I think this is a fantastic point. Even though the Motorola software is not "well designed" by traditional software standards, the fact that the SLVR worked exactly the way I had come to expect it to made it quite usable by my standards. And in the end, that's the most important thing.
I highly recommend checking out that article.
And I highly recommend the SLVR.
