droidStory

Big Red is not known to be the cheapest carrier around, but their excellent (data) coverage at least shows that the company heavily invests into their network infrastructure.

I don’t mind paying a little premium for the trusty Verizon network.  What bums me out though is that Verizon always seems to find new ways to pile on extra fees. There used to be the $12.95 VZ-Navigator tax for the privilege to use your phone’s GPS with Google Maps. The BES data tax to connect to your company’s Blackberry Enterprise Server. And now the $20 surcharge for WiFi tethering, an Android 2.2 (Froyo) feature that Verizon conveniently removed from the default build.

But here is yet another strange twist in the Verizon fee structure. There are two data plans currently offered for Android handsets and other smartphones. Which one do you need?The distinction between Corporate and Personal Email seems to be an oxymoron. Are corporate users  getting more emails than private accounts? What if my company uses Google Apps for corporate email? Do I still need the corporate plan? The details for the corporate plan offer the following explanation:Is Verizon restricting access to ActiveSync or other corporate messaging protocols, unless you pay up? I’m using ActiveSync for both MS-Exchange and Lotus Traveler, so my first impression was that I needed the more expensive corporate plan. Yet, I’m syncing with my corporate mail servers just fine on the personal plan. My calls into Verizon yielded conflicting responses. One person suggested that I only need the corporate plan for BES connectivity and that the higher cost is simply a result of Verizon having to pay RIM some sort of access fee. Still, why list this option for Android phones?

Whatever you do, try the cheaper plan first. It works just fine for me. I’m still peeved about the extra $20/month for WiFi tethering…

Our company phone system allows me to forward voice mails as file attachments. Unfortunately, playing the WAV files on my Android phone doesn’t work. There are some apps in the market that allow you to play the different wav-file formats, but I decided it wasn’t worth buying/installing yet another app for the few times I needed this feature. Instead, I enabled a simple conversion-mail-back service on the DroidStory server.

If you ever need a quick conversion of a voice mail wav file to mp3, simply forward your email containing the attachment to wav2mp3_at_droidstory_dot_com and you’ll get a MP3 file mailed back.

That’s it, no registration or setup required. Enjoy!

PS: No worries – your privacy is ensured. Our server space is much too valuable to keep your files. All data gets removed right after conversion. Guaranteed!

These unboxing videos are getting better and better. Kudos to the guys at TechRestore.

So Verizon is sticking with the “Droid” branding for its most anticipated Android phone yet – the HTC Incredible, now officially confirmed to be released on April 29th.

The Verizon web-staging site revealed for a short time (now password protected) what should make it to the live website very soon.

Update: Pre-ordering starts online on Monday April 19th.