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Name a Better Phone

skitched-20090103-200915-3283219Let’s put all partialities aside.

Currently, I own an iPhone, an Evo (which I’m borrowing through work for testing), and a Pre (my work phone).  I have been a Windows user most of my life, and spent 2 or 3 years with Linux on my desktop.  In the PDA days I ran a Palm Pilot, a Handspring Visor, and a Dell Axim (Pocket PC) device.  In all honesty I don’t care what the brand of the device is that I use – I care that it gives me the best experience for my money and will provide the same for my family.  At the same time my experience may be different than yours.  You may need something cheaper.  You may not need a camera.  You may just need the phone features.  All these factors go into the purchase of a cell phone.

Yet, when Consumer Reports says that it can’t recommend the iPhone 4 as a whole simply because of one feature, when it rates it higher than the competition on every other test, I call foul.  Something’s fishy in this review.

Partialities aside, when you rate phones, as a whole, feature-by-feature, side-by-side with the other phones that I own, the iPhone 4 still outperforms them, hands down.  Even Consumer Reports confirms that. The iPhone 4 takes better pictures than my Evo.  It takes better video.  The iPhone 4 has so much better screen quality than my Evo.  I can edit my movies on my iPhone 4.  The iPhone 4 lasts at least 3 times as long in battery life than my HTC Evo.  The iPhone 4 has a better, more consistent application experience than my Evo.  There’s simply no comparison on those features.  The iPhone beats the Evo in user experience and simplicity (My 2 year old has issues with the Evo – he has no problem with my iPhone).  It has better parental controls.  It has a much smaller, easier-to-hold form factor.  It has FaceTime, and before you say the Evo has apps that do that, the Evo has not integrated it into its Operating System and phone book, and that’s a huge difference.

Now let’s look at the Evo.  True, the Evo does have better call quality.  That’s perhaps the one advantage that matters to me.  The Evo has better Google Apps integration, although that’s not as big a deal to me either since at work we don’t use Google anyway. (and the iPhone 4 is good enough)  The Evo has social integration built in, but except for the hard-core techies and Social Media geeks, this simply won’t matter to the majority of the world, and the iPhone 4 has better apps to handle this anyway.  What else can the Evo do better?

I know you’ll bring up the issue of Choice.  I’ve covered this before – it’s a valid reason, but I ask you to define choice.  Can I run my Evo on Verizon, and run Verizon Android phones on Sprint?  How easy is it for you to switch services with your Android phone?  Can I port my iPhone Objective-C based apps over to the Android marketplace?  No matter what, there will always be elements of the OS you can’t port, and there will always be limitations in choice. History doesn’t change, so long as one company is controlling the infrastructure.  At the same time, no one is stopping me from Jailbreaking my iPhone to get the extra features I might want, should I want them.  Sure, Apple makes it harder, but that’s not stopping people from doing it.  There will always be some form of choice no matter what phone you’re using.

I don’t get all the bashing by mostly people that don’t even own an iPhone 4 based on solely connectivity issues.  I use my phone with my left hand.  Yes, I notice and can reproduce the reduced signal, but it simply isn’t that bad.  Especially contrasted to all the other amazing features I get from the phone.  Yet at the same time, Consumer Reports admits they didn’t even test it with the recommended case that Apple suggested all iPhone 4 users purchase.  Since Apple suggests that to fix the connectivity issues, I would definitely just consider that as part of the purchase price – it’s still a cheap phone!

I don’t understand all the negativity and targeting of the iPhone, asking for recalls and such because of simple connectivity problems.  I still think most of the vocal critics are all people that don’t even own the phone.  For those that do, go get a bumper, for goodness sakes!

And if you still refuse – I remain to ask: Name a better phone.

When that phone comes I’ll be all over it.

My New iPhone 3G S, My Review, and Trip to Fox 13 News

3 days ago I got up at 3:30am, packed up my truck with things like sleeping bags, camping chairs, and goodies to snack on and drink, and headed off to the Gateway Apple Store in Salt Lake City, Utah to get my new iPhone 3G S.  About 3 hours of waiting in 50-60 degree weather later (too cold for me!) I had my new 32 GB iPhone 3G S.  Just a day before I sold my previous iPhone on Ebay for $307, and that will go to the proud new owner, Unlocked and Jailbroken with the new 3.0 firmware tomorrow morning.  I documented the entire process on Qik, which you can watch here.  Fox 13 (KSTU) News here in Salt Lake City also picked up my stream and shared it with viewers – you can watch their coverage of it here.

Shortly afterwards, my friend, Kirk Yuhnke, an Anchor and Reporter for Fox 13 News texted me and asked if I could show it off in a segment today.  I obliged and this morning got to take my first venture into live broadcast TV, showing off my new iPhone 3G.  Kirk let me come back-“stage” with him and we hung out in his office waiting for our turn, and I showed off the iPhone in preparation for our segment.  Then it was our turn, and it went by too fast!  I admit if it weren’t for the video playback it would all be a blur!  I shot the following behind-the-scenes videos (shot entirely on the iPhone) of my trip to Fox13 Studios, on my new YouTube channel: