One Man's Eyes

I'm an early 30's engineer with delusions of adequacy. From here, I'll share my perspective, usually through words, sometimes through pictures, of the view of the world from one man's eyes.

Friday, May 22, 2009

Which will it be?

It is an interesting time in the mobile phone business. One thing I'm sure of, within a month, I will be done with Verizon. We've been with them for pushing eight years now and it's time to move on. I've put up with dull phones and expensive plans in return for the promise of the most reliable network. Well, I've had enough. For one thing, Verizon's network has gone into the crapper. I don't know why. Reception has always been marginal at my house, but these past few years, I have run into dead zone after dead zone, especially around Pearland. So, why pay a premium for a network that no longer is interesting in delivering?
What comes next? That is where things get tough. We're clear of our latest two year contract and I was pretty much expecting to go with AT&T and Iphones for the wife and I (and the daughter is also supposed to get a phone, God help me). I expected a third generation version to come out this Summer and that looks like it is going to happen. So, that is good.
But.....Sprint looks like they are trying to get very serious with the forthcoming Palm Pre. It escapes into the wild on June 6th and everything I've seen so far suggests that it is going to be a very good smartphone. It's probably going to be cheaper to own over the two years than an Iphone. But, while the Iphone has pretty well established itself as the 800lb gorilla of mobile phone and had plenty of support among application developers, Palm is essentially starting from scratch with an all new operating system and will probably take a while, if ever to get a good base of applications.
Plus, I had been planning on the Iphones replacing our current Ipods. For better or worse, we're married to Itunes and I don't expect the Pre to be an exceptional music platform. Still, our 60GB Ipods have been trucking along for many years and don't really need to be replaced.
For now, I will try to be patient (well, I have to for now since neither one is out yet). My only real deadline is the end of July. We're going to Vegas and I do want to have our new phones, in part so I can use them to post about our trip and also so I can have internet access without having to be gouged for $15 bucks a day, which seems to be the average cost for internet access at Vegas hotels.
Patience.....patience.....grrrr.

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