There have been Verizon iPhone rumors for a while now, but I would say there’s probably a greater than 50% chance we’ll see them (at least announced) in January. I’d be weary of Sprint, my sister added texts to her Sprint plan several years ago and they used that as an opportunity to tack on 2 extra years onto her contract without telling her at the time. I will never do business with them because of that.
I’ve been with AT&T for many years and have had really good service with them, and have been happy in general (until they changed how the iPhone data plans worked—which infuriated me). I’m also in Richmond, VA and I suspect that if I lived in a different area, I would have a much different story to tell about AT&T. I haven’t had the issues with my iPhone that @jerv has experienced as far as crashing is concerned, perhaps that was before bugfix updates, were you running it on an earlier generation iPhone?
If a physical keyboard is important to you, I would definitely go with a Droid phone. I’ve gotten used to the iPhone keyboard over the years. The trick is to trust it and to continue spelling the word even if it’s wrong and the autocorrect will fix it for you. It takes a while to train yourself and to get used to it. I’m not a big text message person though, and typing search terms, URL’s and short e-mails/texts are about as far as I go.
Another consideration is what computer you’re using at home. Is it a Mac, PC, Linux? If you’re running a Mac, you will definitely enjoy the tight integration of the iPhone with the OS. If you’re running Windows or Linux, I think that it diminishes some of the iPhone’s luster and would be more likely to consider a Droid. I think it would help if you shared with us the types of things you do with your existing phone (besides making calls), how you see yourself using an iPhone, whether or not you already have an iPod, and how you feel about carrying around 2 devices?
This comic seems relevant and made me chuckle.