From my experience, verizon has more signals than any of my previous phones. (at least in NY)

As for my phone itself, it's pretty solid. None of the fancy mp3 stuff, an ok camera, but I have an mp3 player I carry everywhere, and a really good digital camera. It's ringtones are good, obviously not like the mp3 phones, but they are still pretty good quality. I haven't had any problems and its been treated like hell, and I know many of verizons newer stuff would not be able to endure. I'm actually not sure what model it is, its not directly labeled. Once I remeber what the model is, I mighy have more info.

All in all, it's a cheap durable phone which fulfills all my basic needs.