DH and I both are on Verizon (him: Motorola Droid, me: LG Dare inherited from DH but previously Samsung Flipshot) and we have had absolutely NONE of these problems! When I have a voice mail, I get a white screen with the number (or name, if it's one of my contacts, or "unknown" if it's a blocked number or a call from a multi-line system) is displayed at the top of the screen along with a timestamp, with buttons below saying "check voicemail" or "ignore". If I have a missed call where the caller didn't leave a voicemail, or I "ignore" the voicemail, I get a screen reading "missed call", name/number, timestamp, and buttons for either "ignore" or "add to contacts". If I've "ignored" any of these things, little icons appear on the screen - a little person for a voicemail, an envelope for a waiting text message, or a tiny phone for a missed call. I tap any of those icons to activate it. DH's Droid works about the same way.

NiCD batteries, the older ones, had the memory issue. For those, its better to run them down as far as you can before charging or else their cycles become shorter. The newer batteries, NiMH, do not have a memory issue. However, they have a limited amount of times that they can be charged before they die completely. So, again, they will last longer if you run them down before charging. IMO, NiMH is still better, however, because the amount of time between charges does not decrease.

Joann, I don't have one of those, but when I dropped my land line, I had the same thoughts. I don't have mine on me all the time. Honest, it is ok, not to! :) Just think, you didn't have your land line on you all the time either. At home, I have a shelf my phone lives on. At work, it stays in my back pack. While riding my bike, it is in a small pack that hangs on my bike. When in the back yard, it is in a basket, unless I wear something with a pocket. Of course, it is in my purse when I take it along. While driving it is on the shelf between the front seats. :) Hope this helps. Moni

If you want to talk about power flow through batteries and electrical devices, I'll put it separate so as not to confuse the above. You're right - draw and pull aren't really the right words to use. They're colloquialisms I've used for years in my job. "This pulls 10 amps," etc. The best analogy, and the one that was often used in my education, is to liken the flow of electricity to that of water in a pipe. A higher amp circuit is a bigger pipe. A higher voltage circuit is like a pipe with higher water pressure. The current-using device is like the faucet you open or close. Higher pressure (voltage) and lower resistance (Ohms) are what will increase the current (amps) through the circuit. Amps do not exist until current begins flowing. Amperage ratings of power delivery equipment refer to the maximum allowable amperage the circuit or device can safely carry. Amperage ratings of power consuming equipment refer to the maximum amperage they'll carry in normal operation. To relate that to this discussion, it should now be clear why a higher amperage charger is fine: it's merely a bigger pipe that can deliver more current if needed. That doesn't mean the current will flow - the voltage and resistance will determine that - but that it can flow if needed, exactly as I started in my analogy of the night light and the microwave oven. Charging batteries is an interesting area, because you can observe what happens with a device called a Kill-a-Watt that indicates the wattage used by any device you plug into it. I have a 12-volt car battery that is one of those "booster" batteries you can use to jump-start your car if there's no other car around. You charge this battery with a supplied plug-in charger. If the battery is heavily discharged, the charging wattage will show about 14, but as the battery nears a full charge, the wattage slowly drops to about 2, and at that point you can unplug the charger. This happens because as the charger continues to supply a constant voltage, the charging current drops as the battery's internal voltage nears that of what the charger is delivering. This all occurs not as a function of any type of computerized circuitry in the charger, nor as a result of the charger's maximum amp rating, but simply because of how current flows in the battery charging process. "Smart" chargers can affect the charge rate of a battery by applying different voltages at different phases of the charging process, as batteries of different chemistry do better with faster, slower charges or other specific things, such as high voltage early and low voltage late in the charge, or whatever. Most cell phones today have charge control circuitry to somewhat counter the detrimental effects of constant overcharging, as people frequently do when they charge the phone all night while it's still turned on and they're asleep.