[citation][nom]JOSHSKORN[/nom]I wasn't aware of any sort of Appstore for the Windows Phone 7.5 at the time.[/citation]Are you serious? You can't spend 5 seconds on a search engine? You probably didn't even know half the crap your old phone could do. If you're trolling, at least try to be more of a blatant one.
[citation][nom]house70[/nom]^This.Can't believe that a phone company that's struggling is still closing these exclusivity deals, instead of launching the phone at the same time on all major carriers.[/citation]Verizon themselves are the biggest problem, and I say this as a Verizon customer. They only carried one WP7 model, and it was only mediocre in terms of hardware. That's not because of the device manufacturers refusing to sell phones to Verizon.
They refused to properly display and promote WP7.x. If you could even find the HTC Trophy, it was most likely a non-functional display model - worthless! Their salespeople are clueless about it. If you ask they'll just tell you "Oh just get such and such Android or an iPhone". As far as exclusivity goes, the 920 is "exclusive" to AT&T for a limited time, just like the 820. But just as there is an 822 in the works, there's no reason they couldn't have a 922 or similar for Verizon.
On top of this, you need CDMA radio support in the phone. So it's not a straight rebadge job even if the device isn't exclusive. So why build a phone specifically for Verizon when they'll do everything possible to make sure it never is shown off to customers? Hopefully this changes with WP8. They're supposed to throw in a lot more support and weight behind it, and maybe even get some decent devices. But recently they've been whining about the lack of backdoor access, which makes me a bit concerned.
If only AT&T got better reception around here.