Last year, one of my Cingular Nokia 6340i phones developed a problem. It
worked fine, but would not charge the battery. The problem was in the phone
charging circuit. Fortunately, It was replaced under a phone insurance plan
that was a "freebie" under one of my original service contracts. Seems that
the phone number instead of the phone SN was tied to the service contract.
With the particular phone, the sim card set the phone number.

Anyway, the replacement phone started acting very strangely a month or so
ago. First, it would complain that there was no sim card installed.
(Intermittently, naturally!)
Next, it would not charge the battery. (No error messages, just did not
charge the battery.) Since the warrenty was history, we opened the phone
up. The sim card problem was traced to dirty spring contacts between the sim
card socket and the phone circuit board. Minor disassembly and cleaning with
91% rubbing alcohol cured that problem. Next, inspection of the circuit
board disclosed that the rebuilt phone had very poor workmanship in the
areas that had been "repaired" Cold grainy solder joints were obvious in
several places.) Replaced parts were not centered over solder pads. The flux
residue from circuit board parts replacement soldering was not removed. As
it turned out, the no battery charge problem was nothing more than a a cold
solder joint on a circuit board to connector header. So, I lucked out this
time.

My phones are GAIT phones, not GSM, thus complicating the replacement phone
and parts issues. GAIT phones, at least in theory, will operate in an analog
only area if needed. In practice, it seems that Cingular has managed to at
least partially lock this feature out. In addition, the phones are data
capable, and enabled. Cingular is supporting this feature in a marginal
fashon, making data use difficult and unreliable. We have periodic problems
with Cingular making changes of some kind that wipe out data or internet use
untill I call and complain, then go thru a couple of levels of customer
support. This seems to have happened about four times a year, on all three
phones. (Oddly, not usually at the same time.)

Naturally, Cingulars response is to replace the phones, and sign up for a
new two year contract. Replacing the phones gets into one bag of worms,
since Cingular is GSM only in my area, other than some AT&T and old analog
cell sites. Since Cingular is going to 3G in the future, a replacement phone
should be compatable with my existing data use and 3G as well as GSM.

Unfortunately, a new contract would change some of the existing service
options to a "charge extra" rather than the current included in base rate
status. In addition, the "new" contract would charge based upon data usage
as well as minutes. Currently, only minutes are chargable.

Since I have a newer car with a built in cellphone (Locked to Verizon) I'm
seriously considering forgetting about Cingular and switching.

Any pros and cons concerning Verizon service?