i was mildly excited to get this new phone after losing my lg vx6000, which i really liked. i liked the lg vx6000 because of its convenient camera, its ability to have mp3 ringtones (via some easyhacks), its ability to sync via bitpim (a great tool, look it up on the web!), and its decently small size. when i upgraded to the v710, my first hesitation was its ginormous (enormous) size. it's bigger than motorola's old star tac line, which for the better half of a decade set the golden standard. compared to the lg vx6000, this motorola v710 is a big, big, clunker, the land yacht of modern cell phones.one _might_ think that my concern about the size is all image-based; but no, the size creates serious problems. for one thing, the phone is heavy and easily falls off whatever its clipped to (belt, bag, etc.) because of its weight and its clumsy holster. secondly, the giant size makes the phone get in the way of daily activities. this phone ought to be as slim as motorola's razr v3 phone.originally, i was pretty excited to get a 1.2 mp camera and a camcorder. of course, i think this imaging chip is a cmos not a ccd, which is a negative, but one i'm willing to accept for the sake of size and price. however, when you first take the phone out of the box, you will have the ultimate problem of figuring out how to transfer the photos and videos off your phone to your computer. it seems that verizon tries to trap you into using their extremely overpriced pixplace service. at 25 cents an upload, you can easily rack up a bill as enormous as this phone's body. what's the use in owning a digital camera, if you need to pay in order to retrieve your pictures? that's like owning a film camera! it appears that originally, we were supposed to transfer our pictures via this phone's nice bluetooth functionality. however, what i'm hearing is that verizon purposely dumbed down this phone's bluetooth functionality in order to armbar us into using their expensive (and inconvenient) data transfer services. after all, we should've been able to transfer mp3s to our motorola v710 phones via bluetooth in order to use them as ringtones or with the built-in mp3 player.the only way to get around this data transfer dilemma is to buy the moderately priced transflash ram card. sandisk makes a nice 256mb transflash ram card, which has greatly improved my relationship with this phone. it's feels more like a quick fix than an ideal solution, which would be a wireless or even wired connection direct to my computer. (in fact, earlier, i had purchased a motorola data cable for this phone; but without the expensive software and without the time to implement the hack software, it was of little use to me.)my disappointment over the bluetooth functionality doesn't stop there. i am indeed upset that i can't transfer files to my computer via the bluetooth connection but am further unhappy that i cannot interface the phone via bluetooth with my palmone tungsten t5. one would expect that i could use the pda's phonebook from my phone via the wireless connection. from what i'm hearing, one of the few things this bluetooth i/o is good for is one of those expensive wireless handsfree kits. luckily, the phone has a built-in speakerphone that provides a good handsfree solution, one of this phone's only positives.i do enjoy the camera with somewhat satisfactory flash and the camcorder. the still images come out nice at 1.2 mp, admittedly better than the pictures from my old lg vx6000. i also enjoy the self-portrait mode, where you close the lid and use the _outside_ screen as the viewfinder. (this could function as a makeshift mirror if needed.) the biggest negative about the camcorder is that the video is stored in this awkward .3g2 (3gpp) format, which is incompatible with windows media player and seems only to work with apple quicktime.it seems that verizon is pushing its customers to upgrade from lg vx6000 phones to these motorola v710 phones. it _is_ a natural evolution from small still pics to video clips. however, verizon's definitely taken this opportunity to attempt to foil the gadget guru crowd, which previously enjoyed hacks for free wireless web and the like. considering that customers will find they need to buy more of verizon's services in order to use this phone verizon ought to be paying the customers to switch to this phone. perhaps, the closest we'll get to that situation is a free-after-rebate deal.