[miamicanes]

> this is not the type of phone you bring hiking with you.

Unfortunately, until Congress tells the FCC to force Sprint and Verizon to allow R-UIM cards, it WILL be the type of phone you take when you go hiking. Or to the beach. Or (shudder) on a canoe trip. Because there IS NO easy way to temporarily substitute a cheap phone bought for $10 on eBay (or use your old phone) in situations where your phone would be in unusual danger of damage or destruction.

It's even worse than requiring a call to "Customer Care" -- with Sprint (and presumably Verizon), you can't even temporarily activate an old phone with previous version of EV-DO (or no EV-DO) without screwing up your plan settings. Their system literally won't allow you to activate a first-gen EV-DO phone on a second-gen EV-DO plan (or a 1XRTT phone on an EV-DO plan). I know, because I tried doing it the last time my phone got destroyed to avoid being without a phone for a weekend and a day.

As for buttons, that's why I'm sitting out the current generation of new phones. It's bad enough HTC seems to have all but banished more than a single discrete button (yuck... if I wanted a single-button iSlab, I'd buy a real one)... as far as I can tell, the Raph* series doesn't even have a real 5-way navigator. And to think I used to gripe about the Samsung SPH-i300 not having a membrane-bubble numeric keypad on the back of the battery pack as a secondary means of dialing by feel alone... the latest phones make THAT look like the "good old days" when phones HAD more than a single real hardkey...