Support Questions from a new inredible user

Picked up the incredible about a week and a half ago and despite some hiccups, still having a great time with it. This was more of an impulse buy because my old tmobile phone (cheap, free 2 years ago) suddenly stopped receiving calls. Luckily i wasn't on any contract so I had a lot to choose from.

Considering I had no experience with any smartphones (maybe 5 minutes on an iphone) nor had I any idea what they were capable of, I was quite confused with choices on the market. I was leaning towards the iphone since word of mouth dictated that it was "the" phone to get. The price was turning me off a bit and even someone as non-tech savvy as me couldn't get away from the new iphone chatter. I had no time to wait for a new iphone and even then, it doesn't seem like places were really dropping prices for the older models. So I waltzed into the verizon store to see what they had to offer, and I was in luck since apparently a new phone had just launched, the incredible.

Unfortunately the store was sold out, and apparently other stores were sold out as well too. They couldn't really tell me when they would get a new shipment in, so perhaps I was better off with the motorola droid. But as I saw them side by side, the incredible looked to be more my style. The droid seemed heavy, and shaped too brick-like. Also the screen on the incredible seemed to be much more vibrant, but perhaps that was a difference in brightness settings.

So the same day driving home I saw this small mom and pop type store which sold verizon phones. Since I really needed a phone asap, I walked in and luckily for me, he had quite a few in stock. Not only that but he was surprised this phone was supposedly back ordered, since nobody had come to him for one yet. But anyway to get to the point, I signed up for the verizon contract and activated the phone. The guy also gave me a great deal on the phone, he knocked off $50 from the retail price, and gave me a $100 rebate which ended being $50 for the phone itself. I think it didn't hurt that we are both korean. Had I known how much better of a phone I could have got for 50 bucks in the past, I would have never opted for the free phones.

So fast forward to now, I have been using the phone for about a week and a half. I do love this phone, I use it like a mini laptop. I can't believe that 2 weeks ago, a tip calculator was the most high tech thing on my own phone, and now this. But I did come across a few problems, which i'm curious if some of you share. First off is the short battery life, but I can see from the first page that it's a known problem. I am however having a camera problem, where it decides to freeze on me when i take a picture, and doesn't save in the process. To get the camera working again, i have to force close it using an app, or else it just gives me a black screen when i go to the camera app. I would say it happens about 25% of the time i'm using the camera.

Another thing I noticed was odd sound quality coming out of the ear piece. Took me a while to notice this because I thought that's how it was suppose to sound, but during a call, I decided to use speaker phone and suddenely the voice on the other end was a lot more crisp, and I could even hear their backround noise a lot better. Is this just my phone or do you guys experience similar things?

Despite the couple hiccups, I still enjoy the phone and don't regret choosing it at all.