mocoblog

Goodbye Verizon, Hello iPhone

After 10+ years with Verizon it took a device to lure me away. I don’t even care that att has inferior high speed coverage. It could have been alltell or sprint. Less than 1.5 hours ok line at an AT&T in SE portland on launch day 2 and a shiny white iPhone was mine. I didn’t know at the time that I would be the envy of all my nerderrati friends back in NYC (for just over a week).

My gf has G1 iPhone so it wasn’t an entirely new experience. Friends with jailbroken phones had already seen an app store of sorts. One surmises that apple was behind that “beta test” since so many of the jailbreak apps were found day 1 on the real app store; like Tap Tap but now with less features.

I proceeded to install all the free apps I could find. (I now have 5 pages of apps.) imported a lengthy contact list of 150+ which has migrated, not so elegantly, from an LG6100 to a Moto e815 and then to an LG9800 back to Outlook then finally to my iPhizzy. Next was my huge gmail account. The iPhone took it all like a champ. I treat it like a new PC. Installing every app, turnin every knob, and flicking every switch. Amazed by the simplicity if it all I was not surprised when it treated me like a PC user. It didn’t take long for me to crash my iPhone. After loading opening and closing numerous v1.0 and earlier apps in rapid succession it didn’t take me long to get applications to quit unexpectedly and in some cases I had my PC, er phone even reboot! It took me about 15 emails and SMSes to get comfortable with the keyboard. Like T9, you have to be able to “trust” it to have proficiency.

Core apps work great. I need to keep reminding myself that this is a phone. Albeit a phone that redefines what a phone is. I’m not surprised about some of the instability that I have been experiencing; I know that my usage is excessive and not ideal.

Battery life is my new focus after dowloading nearly every free app.. Bluetooth while talking and playing with apps seems to he a huge battery suck.I am tweaking my settings for brightness, wifi, push, gps, etc in an effort to extend battery life. Luckily I am usually abhop skip and jump away from a iPod sync cable and 5mw of power to go along with it.

Do I love my iPhone? Many ask that question. My reply is usually a shrug. Do I think that the phone offers an unparalled experience? Absolutely. However, being technical in nature I have always made use of the lesser used features found on many non-smartphones. Creating shortcuts to Bluetooth menus and alarm clocks are surely missed. As is the ability to listen to voicemail over Bluetooth. Let’s also not forget the lack of voice dialing; a feature which most ppl don’t even use on their motos, lgs or samsungs. I think I would prefer a device that offered that level of customization. Hard to say. I think that is a gripe common amongst apple products. But hey, apple Isnt as interested in appealing to a techno snob like me as much as the masses who welcome the sheer simplicity and genius of the iPhone.

I hate to say it, but expect more iPhodder from mocoblog as I untap the many apps that will be born in the nwar future. Similarly expect to see a growing list of iGripes.

Of course this post was written hastily from the Wordpress app on my iPhone!