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Verizon Wireless and Motorola are expected to unveil details of their new Android phone today.

Guest: Kent German, CNET

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New data from the Pew Internet and American Life Project finds young people aged 12 to 17 have adopted cell phones at nearly the same rate as adults. The small gap that exists now was much larger five years ago, according to Pew's Amanda Lenhart.

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Today we feature part two of our interview with David Pogue of the New York Times.

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For the past few weeks New York Times technology columnist David Pogue has been urging readers to complain to Verizon, Sprint, T-Mobile and AT&T about voice mail instructions that consumers hear when they leave messages or retrieve their own.

The 15-second message amount to theft of customers money and time, according to Pogue.

The campaign is beginning to work.

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Consumers in the U.S., Canada and Spain spend more money on mobile phone services than the remaining 27 countries in the OECD, according to a new report. Taylor Reynolds, an economist with the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development and author of the report, says residents of the Scandinavian countries pay the least to use their phones.

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I've finally chosen a new phone. I picked the T-Mobile myTouch, an Android device, over Apple's iPhone.

The actual device was less a factor for me than cost of the plan and quality of the network. The iPhone is clearly a more advanced creature (although the myTouch is good enough for me). T-Mobile's data plan is cheaper. In fact, thanks to a customer loyalty program (I've been withT-Mobile for a few years) I was able to get unlimited minutes, unlimited data, and 400 text messages per month for about $75.

The T-Mobile network, while not always perfect, has been generally reliable. All the stories about dropped calls and 3G outages on the iPhone with AT&T scared me away.

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In the final part of our series on mobile phone choice, we hear from a woman who gave up her iPhone, and a man who says he loves iPhones but would never actually buy one.

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I'm in the market for a new smartphone and can't decide what to buy.

My BlackBerry Curve has been a good phone but I just want something new and different. I'm not considering the highly-touted Palm Pre because it runs on the Sprint network, which is weak where I live.

So I've narrowed my choice to an iPhone or a device that runs on Google's open source Android operating system, like the T-Mobile/HTC myTouch.

Today, some Android fans try to get me in their corner.

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I'm in the market for a new phone and facing a bout of indecision. So I'm inviting folks to tell me what to buy. First up, commentator Dwight Silverman says I'd be a fool not to get an iPhone.

Follow me on Twitter, friend me on Facebook, or call me on the comment line at 612-284-1965

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Today -- part 2 of our interview with Pandora's Tim Westergren.

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"The App Store is like nothing the industry has ever seen before in both scale and quality," said Apple CEO Steve Jobs. "With 1.5 billion apps downloaded, it is going to be very hard for others to catch up."

That's probably true, according to Pete Meyers, associate publisher at O'Reilly and editor of the new book Best iPhone Apps: The Guide for Discriminating Downloaders.

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A company called The Extraordinaries is creating applications designed to allow users to do some good while they fiddle with their smart phones.

The idea is to allow non-profits and other organizations to tap into the power of their memberships and support networks -- enlisting people to perform tasks on their phones. Those tasks might range from classifying photographs to translating documents. A rough beta version is available for the iPhone, with a more complete version due later this year.

The Extraordinaries recently grabbed second place in the NetSquared competition for creative use of technology by non-profits.

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In a new report the Pew Internet and American Life Project places American adults into ten different technology user categories -- from the persistently offline to the constantly connected.

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An audit of 700 mobile phone customer bills by the San Diego-based Utility Consumers Action Network concludes that consumers are overpaying for their cell phone service -- and that the average cost-per-minute is shockingly high.

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What kind of smartphone would you get if users helped design it every step of the way?

Mozilla Labs is asking the public to help come up with a concept for a phone that improves on the iPhone, Blackberry, G1 and other smartphones.

Also today:

Retrevo, a search site that helps people find consumer electronics products, is acting as a matchmaker between Americans who need a government coupon for a digital television converter box and those who don't intend to use theirs.

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Technology enthusiasts have been cooing over the Palm Pre, a touch screen phone previewed earlier this month at the Consumer Electronics Show. Many reviewers have taken note of the similarity to Apple's iPhone, especially in its use of multi-touch technology, which allows users to control a graphical interface with multiple fingers.

Apple has noticed, too. Acting CEO Tim Cook made a lot of noise recently when he said Apple will use all its weapons to defend its intellectual property. And Apple was granted a new patent on touch screens technology this week.

It all points to possible legal battle between the powerful Apple and Palm, which desperately needs a hit product.

Guest: Nilay Patel, Engadget

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Barack Obama says he's still clinging to his BlackBerry, but it looks like aides will pry the smart phone from the presidential hands in short order. The Secret Service and Obama's lawyers say the Verizon BlackBerry 8830 World Edition phone is too much of a security risk and legal liability.

Guest: Maggie Reardon, CNET News.com

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Delta Airlines is now offering wireless Internet service on board some flights between Washington D.C., New York and Boston. Delta says it will expand the Wi-Fi service to its entire fleet -- including planes operated by its Northwest subsidiary -- by next summer.

Earlier this year American Airlines and Virgin America began selling in-flight Wi-Fi.

"Netbooks" (very small laptop computers) were among the best selling digital gadgets on Amazon.com on Cyber Monday, according to PC World.

Tomorrow on Future Tense I'll talk netbooks with Brad Linder, a blogger who writes about tiny computers. Here is the unedited interview from which I will craft the segment:

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By the way, Linder is a freelance radio producer, and recently had a tech story on NPR's All Things Considered.

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Mobile phone company Nokia and the University of California Berkeley have released software that allows some San Francisco Bay Area drivers to use their GPS-enabled phones to better monitor traffic congestion.

The software turns AT&T and T-Mobile phones into traffic sensing devices that transmit speed and location information to traffic engineers. Drivers can tap into the information collected by other phones in the network to get commute times and find alternate routes.

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The Federal Communications Commission this week decided to free up the little-used "white space" spectrum between television channels. That spectrum slice will no longer be needed when the U.S. ditches analog TV broadcasts early next year.

Backers of the move believe it could usher in the age of a faster, universal wireless Internet. Broadcasters and mobile phone carriers have opposed the move, arguing new devices running in the white space could cause interference.

Guest: Stacey Higginbotham, GigaOm

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Sprint Nextel opened a new wireless network to customers in Baltimore this week, offering Internet service for laptops for $45 per month. It's Sprint's first deployment of WiMax technology. WiMax is akin to Wi-Fi, but covers much greater distances.

Sprint calls its WiMax network Xohm and offers speeds of 2 to 4 megabits per second, about twice as fast as cellular broadband networks from the likes of Verizon and AT&T. To use the network, customers need a $60 laptop card or an $80 home modem.

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Reviewers this week spent some quality time with the first phone based on Google's open source operating system, Android. The G1, to be made by handset manufacturer HTC, goes on sale October 22nd. The G1 will operate on the T-Mobile 3G network, and is designed to run Google programs like GMail. The G1 is aiming at the consumer market.

Today's guests: Kevin Tofel, jkOnTheRun; Matt Miller, Smart Phones and Cell Phones