3 weeks in, I'm not sure Touch Pro is for me

[bobby yarrow]

I'm sorry this is my first post, and I realize it's not really getting things off on the right foot, but I've been closely reading this forum for the time I've had my Touch Pro and I'm hoping someone can make me see sense and that I can keep this phone.

This is my 3rd WM phone, and my favorite in many ways. I'm running the stock ROM (of course), with the only substantial hacks being the GPS unlock (VZW here) and the two battery-life .cabs floating around. I've been using mobile shell in lieu of TF3D, and I like the phone.

The two big problems I have are really big problems tho.

1. Receiving calls. I fail to connect about half the time when receiving a call. I'm using S2U2, but that doesn't seem to be the problem (or at least uninstalling it doesn't seem to fix the problem). I've got the phone set to poll the towers more frequently to minimize VZW's ring delay, I can live with that, but when I press to answer I have dead air. Half the time I get the caller about a second later, and half the time the call is just lost. I've wiped back to clean, and, I don't know . . . maybe it's my particular phone, don't see a lot of complaints about this, but my phone doesn't work very well as a phone.

2. Battery life. At first I thought it was just impossibly bad, then after a few days of burning the battery all the way and recharging I thought it was almost ok, but I find myself afraid to make calls (let alone do something like GPS) if I'm away from a charger and want to keep battery life. Part of the problem may be where I live . . . my poor reception at home means I get a much longer battery run at work than I do at home. But say 90 minutes of talk time and 20 minutes of internet over a 6 hour period and I'm dead. This isn't enough to get me through the work day, let alone through the day (which for me is typically about 19 hours).

I have another week to return the phone. Seems like my options are:

- Keep it and try another ROM or something
- Get another one because there's something wrong with mine
- Get a Diamond because I guess the battery life is better
- Go to something like the Storm because blackberry, for all its shortcomings, has decent battery life

Very much appreciate your thoughts.