Mephistos

Smart Phone

By Ray on December 7th, 2009

I guess it should come as no surprise to anyone that I am thinking again about a smart phone. I know, I know… I looked so hard right around Christmas and on up through spring at getting an I-Phone that you guys are sick of hearing about it. Especially when considering that I ended up not purchasing one at all and instead with a last years generation or slightly older web enabled (barely), qwerty keyboard style of phone instead. Do recall though that things with my plan to take over the world… er forget that part. Plans changed due to things beyond my control.

In a lot of ways I am very thankful that I did make that I-Phone jump last winter/spring. I really hate getting locked into a technology, which is exactly where I would be if I had. Add to that locked into a single carrier choice as well. The cool thing is with the Android technology coming along there is not going to be much in the way with that platform getting locked down to either a carrier or a platform. In fact, that is the great thing about it – the open source kind of way that it has happened. And yeah, the I-Phone and company may have more apps now, but give it another six months or so and see where Android based phones rate in comparison.

So now I am torn as I debate what to do going forward. I will admit that I really do not have any major complaints with AT&T. I do agree that the customer service is a little bit lacking at times and that was even more case when I running thirty plus phones on a corporate account with them. In the area though they do have pretty good service and Danville just went 3G a few months back. Downside on that of course is I am just far enough that it does go up and down between them depending on just what the situation is there.

So I am let trying to decide if I want to pursue Verizon, Sprint, or AT&T. All have considerable number of pluses and minuses. Key right now though is that AT&T is not offering an Android based phone at this time. At least when I last looked they were not. And current speculation is that they will start with a low-end phone when they do, which is not all that appealing. And AT&T does need to realize, cover is one thing, 3G is another and Verizon is not telling a fib on the maps. Of course on the plus side, for calling they are the carrier of choice in my circles locally for the most part and I would avoid day time minutes that way. On the other hand, I do not really use all that many daytime minutes either.

Verizon is up next, seemingly have the best 3G coverage across the nation and I do a LOT of traveling, especially Mid-Spring to Late-Fall. And I really like the one phone they have, the Droid (running Android 2.0). It has a nice feature list and I love that it comes with 16GB and can have an other 32GB added (or is 32 total?). And while it does have a camera with nice features, I have not found anywhere that confirms the mega pixels, but I believe it be around 5. Biggest issue I have is with Verizon’s cost. They are a good 30% more on cost for an equal plan with either AT&T or Sprint. And then you have things like the 9:00pm free-calling time instead of 7:00 that the others seem to offer. Oh, and it has to be mentioned, no one, and I mean NO ONE likes the slide out keyboard this phone features. They also have the Eris, but is only running Android 1.5 – though it is maybe upgradable on the fly or at least announced in a 2.0 version for 2010? Many questions there and not sure that it is what I would or not.

And then we are to Sprint. As an office phone I had Sprint/Nextel before. The Sprint part offered pretty good coverage, but similar to AT&T my actual residence is on the edge enough to occasionally drop coverage. They do have a pretty extensive 3G network on the corridors and especially to the North and South of Kentucky where I travel a lot pretty wide coverage over all. Problem of course is the phones both models they have at current (Hero and Moment) are running Android 1.5. The Hero gets a nudge in function and even price compared to the Moment, which is already being billed as feeling like yesterday. As of yet, there is no indication of update on the fly of the Android system (which should be mandatory) nor any indication of a future offering with an update.

So, I guess, just as I did a little while last year, I am going to play a wait and see game on these guys as well. I think all told the reasonable rates and such would push me toward Sprint if I got the updated phone with all the bells and whistles. Otherwise, well, who knows, for the price of plans maybe AT&T will come out with an Android 2.0 based phone to compete, as I am sure I-Phone is going to look to expand to other carriers as soon as they can and that is likely going to both drive AT&T to expand 3G and get the other smart phones to compete at large in the market. They have even said it is coming… blah, blah, blah…