Flutterby™! : a post iPhone world 2010-09-28 21:02:51.075226+00

a post iPhone world

2010-09-28 21:02:51.075226+00 by Dan Lyke 13 comments

This morning my iPhone wasn't charging. Two trips to the Apple store later it still wasn't working, they offered to replace it for $200, or upgrade me to a 4 and extend my contract for two years for $260 or so.

So I went to the fly-by-night kiosk in the middle of the mall and bought a prepaid regular cell phone, and with some chicanery involving SIM cards I ended up with a basic LG phone again.

If, in 3 or 4 months, I decide I really can't live without a smartphone, I will have broken even, and I can research better options in the intervening time.

Should I get another smartphone, this one will have:

a straight USB connector, none of this freaky proprietary crap
a cap for that connector, even if it's just a rubber plug
a plastic screen, even if that means resistive and not capacitive multi-touch
probably a physical keyboard
a corporate attitude that's less content restrictive
no iTunes, preferably it'll just mount as a drive on my Linux computer for getting photos and media on and off of it
it should work as a phone

I need to see how that Nokia N900 stacks up in this.

I think that what's interesting is what I can make those notes do when I feed them into things, and the paper and blue lines have a secondary step in there.

Maybe you should buy a little notebook....... you know, one with paper and blue lines.....

Ya know what the most amazing thing is? This is the third day since my new (to me) phone has seen a charger, and it just lost a bar of battery.

Third day. Not third hour. Man, this post-iPhone world is hard to get used to.

I am finding I'm missing a few things, mostly the notion of logging stuff I'm doing. I'm torn between thinking about a "smart phone", or just getting a sharism.cc Ben NanoNote and writing a little Python. Yeah, it won't log things wherever I am, and unless I spend another $80 on a WiFi Micro SD Card I'll have to plug it in at night to sync updates and such, but I think that'd be a large portion of what I miss.

Of course as soon as I say "$99 for the hardware, and $80 for the WiFi" I start to talk myself into spitting distance of an N900, so I'm gonna continue to hold off for a while...

From what I hear, the iPhone barely even works as a phone. It's a good thing it's not "just a phone"!

Well, it's also a camera and MP3 player, 'cause it was more expensive to buy the one that was just a phone.

Just listened to that episode. Heck, if he had gone all postal on an Apple store, who'd vote to convict?

#Comment Re: made: 2010-09-30 00:40:44.315226+00 by: andylyke [edit history]

This American Life sometime in the past month or so had a show on the theme of "you have the right to remain silent". The opening story was a hilarious if scary one of a fellow who got frustrated with his Iphone and wound up visited by homeland security. It's available, unfortunately as a podcast.

The BlackBerry fits about 70% of what you want. But even that it's a little weak. At least, my 8830 has:

Oh yeah, the BB is available from most carriers. I'm on Verizon, which isn't the greatest in the Colorado Front Range but it only rarely has let me down. I also get tethering for $10/month.

I'm still liking my N900. I'm not as picky about some things as you are, but it blows my older iPhone away, and from what I can tell, Android as well. It's just better integrated all around: GSM/SIP/Skype all working all the time.