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The Verizon Wireless Escapade is a voice-centric phone made by PCD. This flip phone has CDMA and works exclusively on Verizon's digital CDMA 1X networks in the U.S., and it's also a quad band GSM phone for overseas use. Note that you can't use the GSM radio in the US. The Verizon Wireless Escapade is designed for those who travel overseas often and their main task for the phone is to make voice calls. The Escapade has built-in Bluetooth for mono headsets; aGPS that works with VZ Navigator and a 2-megapixel camera that takes only still images. Since the phone doesn't have EV-DO for fast data, it doesn't support Verizon's V CAST Music, V CAST Video nor does it come with a media player. The Bluetooth doesn't support A2DP, as music playback isn't a built-in option. The Escapade is also missing a microSD card slot.

Side buttons include camera launcher, voice command key and volume rocker. The ports include charging, 2.5mm headset jack and a phone charm holder. The side keys are easy to press accidentally, especially the volume keys as they protrude from the side of the phone.


The Verizon Wireless Escapade has a phone book that can store up to 500 contacts, and comes with Nuance's excellent voice command software. Voice dialing worked like a charm on the Escapade via both the phone and Bluetooth mono headsets.

The Verizon Wireless Escapade has a full messaging client that supports SMS, picture mail (MMS), web-based email, IM and Chat. The phone also has the Openwave web browser that works with WAP sites and offers basic web browser features such as managing the cache, history, bookmarks and more. It displays full HTML in a single column. Additional PIM tools include calendar, calculator, tip calculator, alarm clock, stopwatch, world clock, unit converter, and notepad.


The Verizon Wireless Escapade has a built-in GPS that works with Verizon's VZ Navigator smoothly. The GPS gets a fix quickly and tracked our route in the car smoothly. Routing trips and re-routing work well in VZ Navigator and turn-by-turn directions are on target. The 3D map display has occasional delays over 1X but it's still very useable. It's too bad the Escapade's blown-sounding speakerphone spoils an otherwise strong GPS and navigation experience. The Verizon Wireless Escapade also supports Verizon's Chaperone service based on location info.


The Verizon Wireless Escapade has a 2 megapixel camera that can capture still images only, there's no video recording. The camera takes pleasant pictures by 2 megapixel camera phone standards, and offers self-timer, white balance, color effects and shutter sound settings. Since the phone doesn't have a microSD card slot, it saves the pictures to phone's internal memory (57MB is available). The Escapade offers options to send the pictures as a picture message or to the online album, though when we took pictures at the maximum 2 megapixel resolution (1600 x 1200), the phone said the file size exceeds both messaging and uploading max file size. Thus there appears to be no way to get max resolution photos off the phone (how 90's!).


Web sites: www.verizonwireless.com, pcdphones.com