The end of an iEra

About four years ago, my company did something stupid: they opened up access to company-provided smartphones to everyone. A number of folks noticed this and it wasn't long before it seemed like every single person in IT was sporting a shiny, new Palm Treo. Unfortunately, I only found out about the open availability AFTER the company had closed the option. Apparently, it wasn't very long before someone in Finance noticed how much data plans were for the now thousands of Treos running around.

Grand.

So, I missed my opportunity and ended up being the only person in my group to not have a smartphone. To add insult to injury, when it came time to renew my phone, they gave me this crappy LG that was a PHONE...nothing else. I didn't even have the crappy 8-bit like games that used to keep me occupied in the men's room anymore. Sigh...but, I persevered and kept pushing my boss to get me one.

After two years of this, I eventually came to the realization that all of the promises of "oh, yeah, I'll look into that" were as empty as my phone. So, I decided it was time for me to get my own. My wife & I had recently had a child, so it was a bit of a stretch, but when we compared the cost of our one cell phone and digital home service, there really wasn't that much of a difference between that and getting two iPhone 3Gs (lower-case "s" indicating plural, not upper case "S" indicating 3GS). So, we killed both of those and transferred their numbers to our new hotness.

Oh, my iPhone that first year or so. How I loved it! I added app after app, played with it constantly...I even got a gig writing reviews for iPhoneTunes.net (still one of the best iPhone sites out there, IMHO). A couple of months after I got it, I started to read about some of the cool features available if you jailbroke your device and I mustered enough courage to give it a try. In those "early days" there wasn't much out there, but what was there was cool: xGPS, the FIRST turn-by-turn navigation app for the iPhone. Did I mention it was free? iRealSMS, a paid addition that really made SMS usable on the iPhone and CategoriesSB which added the much-needed, but stupidly overlooked by Apple for four versions of the OS, folders for applications!

With these modifications in place, I was happy with my iPhone. Until it crashed. Never really figured out what caused it to start acting loopy, but it was so bad I had to restore. What a chore, especially since I was jailbroken and wanted to get back to where I was before it went South. A day and a half later I was working, but also feeling fairly disenchanted with my little tech love. The functionality I added wasn't all that much. In fact, it was functionality that should've been included with the damn phone to begin with, but Apple's only good at the initial paradigm shift. Once they've captured the market's attention, they never follow through with anything better. Don't believe me? What's the big differences between a first-gen iPhone and an iPhone 4? Slightly bigger screen? Faster with more memory? More storage?

Snooze. Wake me when you get to the upgrades that are comparable to upgrading to an iPhone 3G from an LG LX3000. What's worse, Apple's made it clear since day one that THEY get to decide what apps can go on YOUR phone...not you. At first, it's not a big deal. It's a phone, you want it to work. But, you also want to be able to install whatever you want, even if it will make it stop working. That's MY choice, not Apple's. Yeah, I get it, it's their "brand" at stake. So sick of hearing how concerned everyone is about their brand. As far as I'm concerned, the worst thing happening to Apple's brand is Apple.

But, I'm going to avoid the rant for now...where was I? Oh, yes, I was going to discuss iTunes....

Which I can't do without ranting. Since the instant my credit card was charged for those phones, iTunes was always one of the top reasons I knew I would move away from the platform. Granted, in the early days I never thought I would, but I had a feeling it would involve iTunes in some way. Lousy, slow, ugly pig. Ugh, more ranting. Must change subject.

As the end of my contract with AT&T was looming near*, I started looking at the Android offerings. Now, I'm not a huge Google fan, either. Yeah, I use gMail, primarily because I've run my own mail server and it was a PITA that I was glad to get rid of. That being said, the lineup of Android phones was pretty impressive. Not only that, they were generally innovative, too! It was the Samsung Halo with its built-in pico projector that really captured my imagination. But, in the end, it was an application that was the final nail in the coffin for the iPhone: Tasker. I'm a tech guy who loves to automate stuff, and from the first time I read about it on Lifehacker I knew I would have an Android.

Fast forward to last Friday, Black Friday. My wife and I had fully decided that we were going to move to new phones and away from the iPhone forever. Radio Shack had a great online offering of the HTC EVO 4G for half price and I jumped on it. They arrived yesterday and activated this morning. We did get to play around with them before they activated using the Wifi and I gotta tell you: it was love at first sight all over again. Fast, beautiful, easy to use...I can already see how much better than an iPhone this thing really is!

But, I'm going to reserve a full review until after I've had a chance to use it, test out the coverage of Sprint (as we head out of town to visit the folks for the holidays, it'll get a great torture test) and really put it through its paces. My feeling for it might just be the newness, I'll admit that. However, after just a few hours, I already feel at home with it and enjoy some of the subtle differences so much better.


* Let me just say this about AT&T: I honestly never had a problem with them. I can count on two fingers the number of times I had calls drop on me, and both times I was standing in my old cube at the office which was a reception black hole. Their pricing was a bit high, but I could deal with it.