Tag: AT&T
iPhone Trial Day 1 – Initial Thoughts
Yes, after posting a 1,200+ word rant about why I don’t want an iPhone, I decided to buy one – to at least try it. For this decision, I give full credit to those who commented on that post, either directly or via Twitter and Facebook. They convinced me that I really don’t know what I’m talking about until I actually spend a good amount of time with an iPhone.
I was planning on switching to AT&T Wireless anyway (their least expensive family plan had the best price out of all the major wireless providers), so now I have 30 days in which I can use the iPhone and really decide if it’s the right phone for me. And by that I mean that I can find out if paying an extra $30 each month for the required data plan is worth keeping the phone or exchanging it for something else.
I will keep track of my thoughts across this 30-day trial, posting every once in a while about everything I find to be good and bad with the device. Yesterday was my first day with the iPhone 3G S and, as you can imagine, I have a lot of first impressions, so I’m going to keep each one short to avoid turning this post into another essay.
First Impressions with the iPhone
Out of the box – Battery nearly fully charged. Switch from T-Mobile to AT&T active almost immediately. Good start.
Initial confusion – It helps to read the instructions that came with it. I didn’t know how to perform certain actions (like rearranging icons) at first but reading the short booklet helped.
Keyboard – I make way too many typos. Keyboard is much better in landscape than portrait. I wish more apps supported landscape mode. Typing is frustratingly slow.
Camera – Easy to use and decent quality, though sometimes filled with color noise. I’m surprised I can silence the shutter sound. This picture of my cat is the first picture I took with it (click for full-quality original image).
YouTube – Incredibly simple to use and looks/sounds great over Wi-Fi. Video wouldn’t play at all over 3G.
Safari – Very similar to Safari on a Mac but it often selects links I don’t mean to. Zooming will take some getting used to. There’s a weird bug(?) that stops zooming from working occasionally. I have to leave Safari and relaunch to get zooming to work again. Or I just don’t know what I’m doing.
Maps – Seems useful though not entirely intuitive to use. Had to get used to the fact that it knows where I am already.
Copy/Paste – I’ve already used it a million times. Would have driven me nuts without it. I’m glad I didn’t get an iPhone sooner. It’s slightly clunky to get working (especially the text selection), but it’s better than nothing.
Battery life – After two hours of non-stop fiddling, I still had over 75% battery. At the end of the day, after many more hours of playing with it, I still had 40% battery. Didn’t turn it off or plug it in overnight and now it’s at 29%. I’ll run it down to 0% today before charging it fully for the first time overnight tonight.
Brightness – Holy cow, this screen can be bright. Too bright even. That’s better than too dark.
E-mail – Tried to enter IMAP e-mail settings manually and couldn’t get it working. Asked for help and was told that syncing to my Mac would set all that up for me. Worked like a charm. Reading e-mail is easy but I really wish it had a junk mail filter. Responding to e-mail will rarely happen for me – typing is way too slow.
Software Updates – I was required to update iTunes to sync the phone. It also said I should update Quicktime. Not sure why.
Syncing podcasts – Extremely slow. Probably 5-10 times slower than syncing my old iPod via Firewire. The initial iPhone backup had already completed, so I don’t know why it was so slow. I guess I’m blaming it on USB.
iPod – Haven’t tried iPod functions yet. Noticed that the connector is smaller than on my old iPod, which means I need some kind of adapter for my Belkin car plug if this is going to become my primary iPod. Is there such a thing?
Free space – iTunes reports 14.1 gigs free out of the box, not 16 gigs. There are only 2.6MB of apps and 160MB of “other”, so where are the other 1.5 gigs?
Apps – I started to sift through the App Store on the phone until I realized that it was quite cumbersome to do so. Then I spent an hour or two going through all the top 100 free app lists on iTunes. Downloaded 123 apps. Only tried about 20 so far. Good free selection, but too many garbage apps. I won’t be purchasing any apps until I decide if I’m keeping the phone (and even then I won’t buy many).
Phone – After fiddling with the iPhone for a few hours, I finally left the house to get dinner and actually try it as a phone. While at home, service ranges from 0-3 bars, but it always seems to still work well regardless. It does a great job at finding service when there is none. Better service than I ever had with my old phone and T-Mobile.
Vibrate – Biggest complaint so far. I always keep my phone on vibrate as I find ringtones to be obnoxious (it seems like everyone notices your phone ringing except you), but the vibrate function on the iPhone is way too weak. I barely even notice when it’s active. Not good. I expect a lot of missed calls.
So there it is. My first day of thoughts with the iPhone 3G S. Mostly good, some bad. I’ll continue to play with it, adding more apps and functionality, and post again next week with more thoughts. As of right now, I’m undecided on whether I’m keeping it. After a few days of taking it out of the house, we’ll see in which direction I lean.
TweetWhen is a phone not a phone? – Why I don’t want an iPhone
Today is launch day for the new iPhone 3G S. Based on the number of people who have made it clear to me that this was the perfect week for me to lose my phone, I’d say there’s quite a lot of excitement about the new iPhone release (as always).
But I am not here to write about how great the iPhone is. You can find plenty of that on Twitter. Instead, I intend to do quite the opposite.
I am on the hunt for a new cell phone. That is, I’m looking for a portable telephone that allows me to easily and clearly make calls from just about anywhere. With the cell phone industry expected to sell 4 billion phones by 2010, you’d think it would be an easy task to find a good, solid phone that makes calling people simple. Think again.
I really don’t like talking on the phone. I’m a very visual person, so having to pay attention to someone on the other end of a telephone is a big deal for me. Often, I have to force myself to physically stop what I’m doing in order to actually take part in a phone conversation. So when I’m out doing something, I really would rather not be interrupted by someone somewhere else wanting to talk to me.
Despite the fact that there was, in fact, a time when cell phones didn’t exist and people still managed to get through with their daily lives without dying,today’s society seems to be so dependent on cell phones that I must own one. After all, how else would I know what I need to pick up for dinner when I’m on the way home from the mall?
So now that it’s time for me to find a new cell phone, I find myself wondering what all the fuss is about the iPhone. Every time I’ve used one, I’ve found it uncomfortable to hold and requiring way too many virtual button presses in order to simply make a call. Sure, there’s an “app” for finding the nearest restroom and another for trading pictures with random strangers, but what about the make-a-darn-phone-call app?
When I’m at home and I want to call someone, I pick up the nearest telephone, dial 10 numbers (on physical buttons) and it’s ringing. Shortly thereafter, someone on the other end picks up and I have a conversation. My old cell phone behaved in the same way. It was a Samsung slider phone (I forget the model number) that I could pull it out of my pocket, slide open, dial 10 numbers (on physical buttons), and press call to talk to someone. I even was able to assign numbers that I frequently called to each of the keypad buttons so it only required that I press and hold down a single number to call home.
The iPhone and its touch screen have significantly complicated the calling process. After I lost my phone, I used my friend’s iPhone to call home to let my wife know that she couldn’t reach me for the near future. In order to do so, I had to swipe my finger across the bottom to unlock it, tap the phone icon at the bottom, then tap the keypad button to bring up the virtual numbered buttons, tap out the 10 digits, and then tap call. While it is mildly amusing to watch all the words and graphics on the screen fly around while I was doing all this, the process would definitely get old after two or three phone calls.
When I’m driving and need to quickly make a call or answer the phone, I’d like to be able to take the phone out of my pocket and perform whatever actions are necessary without having to actually look at the phone. Some might say I can do that with the new iPhone 3G S now that supports voice commands, but that would require: a) me to turn down the music or podcast that I’m listening to & b) it to actually understand the voice commands – technology I’ve had very little success with in the past.
Fans of the iPhone keep telling me that if I get one, I won’t understand how I ever got along without one. They make it seem like it’s impossible to be anywhere without the ability to check e-mail, surf the web, watch YouTube, look at Google Maps, and play Peggle.
To all that I say: Bah. I spend so much time in front of my computer at home, responding to e-mail and surfing the web, that I really would like the ability to get away from it once in a while. I already would prefer to not have a cell phone at all but, as I wrote above, that’s not really an option anymore. So since I have to have one, I’d rather it only enable me to make and receive phone calls and keep all that other Internet stuff away from me while I’m on the go. There no such thing as an e-mail that is so important that I absolutely need to know about it while I’m shopping at Target. It’s actually nice to be able to be away from a computer now and again.
Now, since I host a popular podcast about Disney and co-publish a magazine about Orlando theme parks and attractions, there are those that tell me that I will be happy to be able to Twitter, update Facebook, and post pictures/video from an iPhone. To that I say: Maybe. I just *might* want to do those things every once in a while. But I don’t need an iPhone for that. Nearly every cell phone that’s currently available has enough built-in features to send various messages and multimedia with relative ease. What’s the difference? Doing so on the iPhone will cost me an extra $30 a month via AT&T’s required unlimited data plan.
Here’s where we reach part three of why I don’t need or want an iPhone: the cost. I don’t use a phone enough to justify paying $70+ per month on my line alone. For the last few months, my wife and I used between 300 and 400 minutes per month on both of our cell phones combined. The AT&T family plan with 550 shared minutes would be more than enough for us, especially as the minutes roll over. That plan costs just $59.99 a month for both of our lines. If I really wanted an unlimited data plan, I could pay $15 per month for a non-smart phone when I need it and cancel the data plan when I don’t want it anymore. With the iPhone, I’d be locked into shelling out $30 a month whether I use the data plan or not. Plus, getting an iPhone would cost me at least $99-199 up front for the phone ($199-299 if I wanted the iPhone 3G S), whereas I can get another phone that will make calls just as easily (if not easier) for $0.01.
Hopefully this explanation of why I don’t want an iPhone will help explain… why I don’t want an iPhone. I doubt it will stop anyone from telling me I should get one, but at least you know where I’m coming from. Feel free to comment and tell me why I’m wrong and why an iPhone is the best invention since sliced cheese. Maybe someone will convince me. Probably not.
TweetWEDNESDAY WHINE: Cell Phone Dilemma
You may or may not be able to relate to this week’s whine, as it’s fairly specific to a situation I have been in for several years. I have a …
Cell Phone Dilemma
Okay, dilemma maybe too strong of a word but it’s at least a cell phone conundrum that I don’t know what to do about. Maybe someone reading this can help.
I have used T-Mobile as my cell provider for several years now. My wife and I currently share a family plan of some sort that ultimately costs just over $100 a month. It includes more minutes than we know what to do with as well as free nights and weekends.
T-Mobile’s service was great until we moved to Winter Garden where I’m lucky if I get one bar of signal. When we first moved here, we were locked into a 2-year contract, which has since expired. However, I have no idea what to switch to as it appears that every other carrier also has terrible service in this area. Moreover, I can’t reduce the number of minutes per month that I am paying for with T-Mobile without signing a new contract. But if I switch to another random carrier, I’ll have to sign a contract there too and I’ll likely end up being unhappy with them as well.
AT&T is supposedly installing a bunch of new towers throughout Central Florida, but I can’t seem to find any information as to where specifically. If I knew they were putting one near my house, I’d switch immediately.
Of course, then there’s the other issue of what phone to get. As much as everyone tells me to get an iPhone, I really don’t think I’d use it all that much. I am rarely in a situation where I’d need to use the Internet on the road and I generally just use my phone to make calls. So I think I’d prefer to just get a regular phone that I can get for free with a new contract.
However, with $99 refurbished iPhones available (and the new 3.0 iPhone software coming soon), it’s hard not to want to get one, even if I know I’ll barely use it. But if AT&T is terrible in this area (no 3G service here either), what’s the point?
So what’s my solution? Continue to sit around paying $100+ a month for terrible service hoping something better comes along? Switch to another provider hoping they’re better, but getting locked into their contract either way?
I have no idea.
TweetMany TV Stations Won’t Delay Switch To Digital
From imdb.com:
More than a third of all U.S. television stations will not delay the transition from analog to digital and plan to begin digital broadcasts on February 17 or earlier, the FCC said Tuesday. While Congress pushed back the mandatory cut-off date to June 12, stations were permitted to file notices with the FCC if they desired to switch early. The FCC indicated that while most of the requests for waivers will be honored, it could bar some stations from switching early “in the event that the commission determines that analog termination on February 17 by a station or group of stations is contrary to the public interest.”
I’m happy to hear that stations claim that they’ll follow through with their plans. I look forward to seeing what Verizon and AT&T have planned for the analog spectrum once it’s released.
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