So it’s official — I’m seriously sweating the BlackBerry Storm. This is made only slightly troubling by the fact that I have about 10 months left on my iPhone contract with AT&T. Having owned multiple phones on different carriers before there are pluses and minuses to consider:

Plus:

• You are almost never without service
• Take advantage of free in-network calling on multiple carriers
• Have extra voice minutes on one phone or another almost all the time
• If you forget to charge one phone you probably have the other one available in the meantime
• Get to play with two gadgets! You can take advantage of the best features of each and use each one for what it does best.

Minus:

• Starting with the most obvious: two phone bills every month
• Either deal with the hassle of carrying both phones around at all times, or deal with the inevitability of people calling you on the phone you don’t happen to have with you just then
• Deal with syncing 2 phones and keeping track of media in two places
• Packing 2 chargers and miscellaneous accessories while travelling
• The weaknesses of one device aren’t always complemented by the strengths of the other

Overall it depends on your needs but for me, I tend to miss having the benefits of two phones more than I get annoyed by the hassles of maintaining them. I recently ended a second Verizon plan with the Treo 700p and already miss having a second device enough to be seriously contemplating the Storm. My other big and convenient excuse is my AT&T service at my country home is so close to non-existent that it’s not always practical to use the iPhone as my only cell phone. I’ve been using a zBoost cell repeater for the past 18 months to great effect but either something’s changed in the signal or the device such that it’s been less effective for the past couple of months. I’ve made up for that with Skype Out but the thought of having no mission critical emergency communication when the internet or power is out is troubling. All of which is a lot of practical excuse to justify picking up the sexy Storm on Friday but, you know, lots of people have unusual hobbies…

Also having a bit of gadget lust over the Flip Mino HD CK just reviewed, although I’d like to check out the quality of the video recording on the Storm because I don’t really need HD quality — I just want something easily portable that can capture video on the fly at unexpected moments at a quality level high enough to not look totally embarassingly pixelated on YouTube. If such a thing can happen inside the phone I already cart around, more the better.