Two years ago I bought an iPhone 3G. I never desired the iPhone – I bought myself the first generation PRADA mobile by LG and I ♥ that phone wholeheartedly – I only bought one because my former business partners wanted our company to design and develop iPhone apps. In order to build these apps, we needed iPhones. I couldn’t argue with that logic so I packed away my PRADA mobile, canceled my contract with T-Mobile, and waited in line with every other crazed consumer for hours to own the iPhone 3G.
My phone bill with T-Mobile was well under $80 a month. My original phone bill with AT&T was close to $160 a month, based on services I always had with T-Mobile. Based on my monthly usage for minutes et al, I was able to reduce my monthly bill to $130. So not only did I own what appeared to be an expensive toy, but I was paying a hefty premium to use it.
We never built any iPhone apps, we didn’t come close to even starting UI designs for any of our ideas. I retired my phone and said good-bye to an awesome phone carrier just so I could own an overpriced piece of plastic that would seamlessly sync with iTunes. Oh, joy?
That is my disclosure about AT&T and the iPhone: I am not a fan of either one. In the two years I have been an AT&T customer, my phone calls consistently drop with the changing of the wind. I can stand on the sidewalk, the iPhone indicating that I have full network coverage, and my phone call gets dropped. I often call a friend in New York who’s become so accustomed to our phone calls ending abruptly that we naturally assume it will happen each and every time. Which is often the case.
AT&T swears on a stack of Bibles that the problem is not with the network but with the iPhone itself. And I can agree with AT&T’s position, given how many times I have an issue using the iPhone.
I have never been a fan of the sound quality on the iPhone. I can never properly hear a caller unless I am inside and wearing the special iPhone earbuds. Without those earbuds, the caller sounds far away and I can hear the outside environment more than the caller’s voice. This reason alone has made me dislike the iPhone from day one.
As far as calls are concerned, incoming ones seem to pose a problem with the iPhone. A call will come through so I tap Accept. The iPhone does not register my touch so I tap again. And again. If there is a magical tap to accept an incoming call, I have yet to learn it. It’s simply easier to not accept and then return the phone call.
I will scroll a web page in Safari which, strangely, prompts the iPhone to adjust volume. Even though my fingers are nowhere near the volume adjustment. If I want to leave a web page and return to another one I had open, Safari freezes up before I am able to see the page queue. I’ve made a practice of only keeping three pages open at any given time, and those many can still cause Safari to lag.
I ask friends with iPhones about their issues, nobody seems to ever experience anything but dropped calls. So I make an appointment with a Genius at the Apple store in hopes of finding a solution. The iPhone is taken by a Genius into the backroom of the store where a “firm” restart is conducted on the phone. Somehow, this “firm” restart goes above and beyond any normal restart or System Restore I can conduct via iTunes. The iPhone will operate normally for a week before going back to its previous strange behavior.
As for the constantly dropped phone calls? Apple blames AT&T for the problem.
Come July 11, my contract with AT&T expires. I am but one of thousands, if not hundreds of thousands, of unsatisfied customers looking to get as far away from AT&T as humanly possible. And AT&T knows this. Last Saturday I called AT&T inquiring about my contract; twenty minutes later, my monthly bill was reduced to $80 based on new incentives that went into effect June 7.
But are these incentives enough to keep me as an AT&T customer? Two words: hell and no.
Apple is releasing the iPhone 4, available for purchase on June 24. Friends are in a frenzy to pre-order their iPhone 4 which will only be available to AT&T customers. With all the bells & whistles included on the iPhone 4, are they enough to keep me a loyal Apple customer? Again: hell and no. I could care less if the iPhone 4 were the Sweet Baby Jesus descended from Heaven above, I need a phone that allows me one simple act: to place phone calls that I can actually hear clearly.
A friend sent me a link on the U8800 from Huawei, and honestly I would trade the iPhone I own right now for that smartphone*. Until Huawei releases the U8800 in America, come July 11 I plan to unlock the iPhone 3G in my possession and return to T-Mobile. I may not have the same amazing screen resolution of iPhone 4 users, but at least I will be able to have an uninterrupted phone call with friends.
*Unless PRADA and LG release a third iteration of its phone, then I will sell other people’s kidneys on the open market to buy it.