I was going to get this phone until I saw the ars technica review about the changes to the Verizon version, especially the keyboard and fonts.
That was a poor review. The G2 has the AOSP keyboard built in that you can switch to. Also perhaps the font was off because the text size defaults to medium, change it to small and it's fine. Although italics don't show up correctly. They also gave the G2 crap for not having a recent apps button. While I agree it's odd that it's not an option, Samsung and HTC do not have a recent apps button either.