Analog and roaming are two unrelated things. You can roam on digital and
be using your home network on analog. The "analog=roaming" association
is primarily due to SprintPCS, whose own network is all digital, and
(until recently) they disabled digital roaming on their phones. It does
not apply to cellular providers like Verizon Wireless.

Previously on alt.cellular.verizon, Paul J. Lucas said:

; Jeffrey Kaplan <acv@gordol.org> wrote:
; > According to the specs, it does have analog, but I have never, ever, seen my
; > go to analog even in places where my previous phones would.  So I disabled it
; > in the phone prefs to save some battery power.
;
;     If it doesn't actually go into Analog, I don't think it saves
;     anything by turning it off.  (The reason the switch is there is
;     to prevent analog roaming, methinks.)

I'm thinking that it may be trying to find an analog signal before
giving up.  The time spent in analog is therefore wasting battery
power.

It's only guesswork on my part.  The only certainty I have is that it
has never found an analog signal when it looses digital in fringe
areas, and I now live in a fringe area.