Other than making sure VZ can activate it (clean esn), what physical/operational things should I be looking at?
In other words, some of the known manufacturing/functional issues that have been known to exist on these phones, that I want to check out before buying one that I see.
where are you buying it from...... ebay, where you have no physical interaction with the seller, or local craigslist where you meet the perrson?
if it were ebay, i would look at the reviews, see about returns, get the device, have it activated, and run it through the tests...... that is, set it up, make sure it syncs, transfer music, make sure it plays, listen to the audio, make a couple of test calls on it, use the speaker phone, have a friend call with it, and listen to how they sound over the mic........
if it is like a local craigslist, i would have it activated with the person still present, and run through a few of those tests to make sure that it works. I wouldnt just buy nd go on my way...........
find out what the latest os is, and look on the device to see if it has the most up to date os on it
latest os for the droid is 2.0.1 and it will most likely have it. This was pushed to the phone and if you didnt install it you kept getting notifications to update.