toopone: The summer of the smartphone shortage

I can't tell you how many people I've talked to this summer who have told me that they had finally made their decision to get a new smartphone only to have their plans thwarted when they got to the store and their well-researched choice was unavailable.

This is exactly what happened to my former college roommate, Stephanie Rahill. After months of research and several conversations with me, her husband came out of the Verizon Wireless store three weeks ago and told her that she would have to wait nearly a month for her new HTC Droid Incredible smartphone.

"When he came out of the store empty-handed, I was like, 'Where is my phone?'" she said. "My current phone has a crack in the screen and won't last much longer. He had researched which phones he wanted us to buy for two months, so he wanted to wait. But I was aggravated."