G'day Scrambler,
I've had my NextG phone for about 5-6 months now. Have found that the coverage in the air at times may not be quite as good as the old CDMA network, however if I rated it out of 10 against CDMA, it would rank about an 8.5-9.
When you do have coverage however, most times (ie. when you've got 1 or more bar of coverage, and not just the bare coverage) it is possible to have a phone conversation without it dropping out on you.
So not all was lost when the change from CDMA to NextG took place,
.
morno