No data plan. Need sync contacts & calendar. LG octane VN530 or ?

[mm_in]

I have a Razr V3m that I have been using for years and am happy with (except for the slight lag, I'm impatient). After buying two new batteries (OEM, $5 ea) I still have no battery life (OK-5 minutes) and was told by a friend that the problem is my charging plate.

Need a new phone. Just renewed the primary phone on our plan, and I am up, so it seems like a good time. I am not interested in paying for a data plan. BUT - I would like to have me contacts & calendar on my phone so I don't have to carry a PDA too.

I mainly use my phone to talk on, with 5 texts/day. It would be nice to be able to take random pictures, as I never carry a camera.

I saw that LG has an Outlook sync utility, so my plan is to get an LG. From my research, none of the phones available on verizon without a data plan are supported by BitPim or synccell, and those were the only other options I could find.

I've been searching the internet and this site, but haven't found any answers, so if you have any suggestions, please reply.

The phones I have been considering are:
Pantech Jest - Free
LG Cosmos touch VN270 - $80
Motorola Barrage - $130
Casio G'zone Brigade $100 (I sail in summer, so waterproof would be nice)
Verizon Wireless CDM8975 - Free
LG cosmos VN 270 - Free
LG Accolade VX5600 - Free
Samsung Intensity II SCH U450 - $50
Pantech Crux - $50

Thanks for your help!

[raykholo]

I can tell you right now that the LG Octane is probably the best out of all the phones you have listed, and probably the most capable. I have it, and am very satisfied. Similarly to you, I have blocked all my phone's data.
I know of a PC application that will synchronize your Google calendar to the Outlook running on that PC. I have not used the outlook sync program for the Octane because I have an iPod Touch for all my Google services, but this should work in theory. I might test it out just for the sake of it. As for contacts synchronization, the Outlook Sync program should also be able to do that. However, I have not yet encountered a free program that will sync between Google Contacts and Outlook. Your best bet might be to go into Gmail Contacts, create a label for just the contacts you want to sync to your phone, export those as a CSV file, and import that into Outlook. Note that this would be a one-shot deal, and it would be far easier to manually add contacts onto your phone after the initial transfer.
As for the calendar, again, I have an iPod Touch and I find the wireless sync of my Google Calendar and Contacts over wifi to be much less of a hassle than having to pull the official usb cable out of my charging dock and plug it into my laptop.

Hope this helps

[mowreyp]

Please note that LG Outlook Sync does not work on Outlook 2010.