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For the new job, I had to go out and get my own cellphone. Since my last workphone had been Sprint (and that’s what Jackie has), I figured I’d stay with them. My last three phones had also been blackberries, and while they’d been fairly reliable, I couldn’t turn down the chance to get a new, shiny android phone.
I did a bit of research and found out there were only two android phones that sprint carried- the Hero and the Moment. I ended up choosing the Moment since I preferred the physical keyboard. Jackie and I upgraded her plan to family everything plan and away we went with one month to cancel if I didn’t like it.
Samsung Moment
The moment got off to a rough start.
- Keyboard - The keyboard keys were tiny and smooth, which made it harder to type than a blackberry, despite the keyboard being wider. The tactile feel of it just wasn’t there.
- Holster - They didn’t have a holster, only a belt clip, and it had the screen facing out, meaning I’d activate it when my wrist brushed up against it; I nearly made two emergency calls this way.
- Slider - Since the phone slid open and didn’t have a holster, it would also get caught on my coat our office chair arm and get slid open. on top of that it felt wobbly when open, like you could accidentally snap it in half.
- Camera - The optics were just bad. pictures were always fuzzy, and god forbid it was dark, because you couldn’t get people to hold still long enough for the picture to snap.
- Touchpad - I’m not sure what the deal with the touchpad is, but it’s entirely too sensitive- you either press it too lightly and it doesn’t work, or you press too hard and it scrolls 3 places. the mechanics of it were hard to figure out- was it a slider like the kindle? a sloppy keyboard nub? a directional pad? I still don’t know, it was too sloppy.
- Battery - The final nail in the coffin was a twofer; poor signal at home and at work. Since I spent most of my time in the basement (at both home and work), I somewhat expected the signal to be poor; but I didn’t expect to go to roaming several times an hour. This of course killed the battery, leaving a fully charged battery at 20% by noon, requiring a recharge for the next hour or so. I’d get home, go to the basement, and by 8pm need yet another charge. This got old real quick.
My first reaction was to go back to Sprint and make sure the phone wasn’t defective. They tried to “change frequencies” on it with a system reset, but it did no good. Truth be told I had already made up my mind, and just went in to get their pamphlet with the plans for comparison’s sake.
After I decided to dump sprint, I tried to take the phone back (with two weeks to spare). Funny thing tho, when I bought the phone on the ~23rd of December, the packaging got recycled with the rest of the Christmas packaging. Little did I know that, by losing this 30 cent box, I could no longer return my $400 retail value phone, and by canceling the plan, I had to pay the $200 difference.
Needless to say I was furious, and the “tough shit” attitude from the counter jockeys who’d previously been decent did not help the situation. After I stormed out, jackie canceled the service with the intent of calling sprint’s customer service to deal with the rest. From there we went to the Verizon store. While I spoke to the Verizon people, Jackie rained fired and brimstone through her own phone until the sprint rep agreed to send us packaging so we could return the phone and be refunded. So we are back to square one at this point; I need a phone, and jackie’s plan is back to normal.
Motorola Droid
When I looked at android phones, I initially didn’t limit my search to sprint; the one phone that impressed me the most was the Droid, however a combination of crappy website, confusing plans and 30 minute wait in-store left me feeling like verizon was doing everything in it’s power to keep me from giving them money.
After realizing Sprint wasn’t a viable option, I waited the half hour and talked with the verizon rep. The verizon plan cost more and offered less, but honestly only cost $15 more a month. For the time being, Jackie is staying with sprint until next november, when she’ll transfer her number over to Verizon.
So, how is the droid?
- Keyboard – Despite the keys being more crowded, their simple square shape and feedback lets you know when you press the button.
- Holster - The holster slid in nicely and kept the screen facing inward. No more accidental 911 calls. That, plus the design of the holster prevents it from opening while in place.
- Slider - On the verge of being “too hard” to open; it requires a good grip to open, and that’s not a bad thing in my book.
- Camera - Faster reaction time to take a picture, but I haven’t played with it much. More settings for controlling focus, quality, etc.
- Touchpad - despite the gold design making me think it was a fingerprint scanner, it turns out it’s a very obvious directional pad with a good feel to it.
- Battery - 4 bars in my basement. 4 bars at work. After running from 6am-2am, the battery is at 60%.
That said, the droid isn’t perfect. In the dark it’s hard to tell which end is up, and when the alarm is going off, trying to find the power button is impossible.
The real test of the droid will be my attempts to write apps for it. I have a couple ideas in mind, so hopefully I’ll get a chance to toy with the Android toolkit. I played with it on the moment and found it slightly limited, but hey, it’s better than anything I had with the blackberry.
Anyways, the end result of the comparison is Verizon and Droid beat the hell out of the moment, and it’s definitely worth the extra money if ya know, you value your phone conversations.
Ok, enough incoherent rambling, time for bed. Spellcheck tomorrow.
Thoughts:
1. Sales people are sales people. Whatever they may be like off company hours, on company hours their jobs are to 1. sell things and 2. not allow returns. Furthermore, the contracts are written to help them with (2). Things like human decency don’t factor into the on-the-job equation.
2. Sprint sales folks will lie to you. I had a 2 year Sprint plan in Raleigh, hooked in by the $WORK company discount they offered (see (1.1). A few months into my contract, I got a very steep bill because I’d run well over my monthly minute allowance. I contacted them, asked to adjust my minutes up. The phone rep said, “It’s done.” The following month, I used the minutes like I had them. Imagine my shock when I got the bill, the allowance hadn’t been increased and the phone tech I talked to gave me the “well, it was never adjusted and I have no evidence that you called in” line.
3. Verizon’s coverage is probably the best in the country, but their reps can treat you pretty badly. I walked into a Verizon store in Huntsville, AL, and got in line. an older couple wandered in after I did, but the sales rep made a beeline for them, completely ignoring me. The three of them spent the next 2-3 *HOURS* examining Every. Single. Phone. On. The. Shelves., inquiring about battery life and ringtone volume because “he can’t hear ringtones”. After half an hour, I approached the tech support desk and was told I was “next on the list”. Gee, thanks. After 45 minutes, I started pacing laps around the store floor to see if I could get their attention. After an hour, the store manager came out and told me to stop pacing, that I was next in line. My complaints fell on deaf ears. I paced for most of the rest of the time until told (again) to stop, that it was making people nervous. I’ve generally had better response time from Verizon staff, but that incident annoyed me.
4. When buying a phone, it’s probably best to test functionality before you buy it. That won’t tell you if it is going to switch to and from roaming every 5 minutes, but it can give you a good feel for the UI. When my wife and I purchased our blackberry Curves at the Verizon store, we tried the newest touch-screen blackberry available. Neither of us could get it to scroll, it repeated keystrokes, and generally was an annoyance to use. The older, less fancy Curve, acted exactly as one would expect, so that’s what we got. It’s been quite a pleasant device to use. Compare that with the Treo that preceded it. I had had Palm PDAs in the past, and had had good experiences with them. The lack of a grafiti pad, and the tendency of the phone to freeze when it had trouble picking up a signal, contributed to my replacing it at the end of the contract with a blackberry.
5. From all the reports I’ve heard, it would probably have been best to wait for the next generation ‘Droid. Early adopters get to sort through all of the design flaws that haven’t yet been identified, much less solved.
6. Maybe it’s because I’m of partial Scottish ancestry, or maybe it’s the economy, but I’m starting to desire having just a regular, cheap, crappy phone without the monthly data plan. It’s not like I irc from the phone, or that I’m going to log into a server somewhere and fix it from the Metro train.
7. If $WORK wants me available 24×7, they can jolly well pony up for a work phone. There’s no way I’m spending *MY* hard-earned cash on *THEIR* leash.
At the end of the day, I’ve decided that a phone is just a tool, not a toy, and that one service provider is probably just as mediocre as another service provider. Sometimes you get lucky and they treat you like a human instead of another number. Most of the time they treat you like another annoyance to be dealt with as quickly and (to them) painlessly as possible.
Me, cynical? naaaaaawwwwww………..
Shaldannon
first 3 I agree with;
4) keyboard was annoying after use, but not on initial usage- I figured it was something I had to get used to; Holster was my bad- I hadn’t thought through the joys of inward vs outward; slider wasn’t noticeable until I was wearing it; camera worked fine *in* the store in bright light, and way better than my blackberry did; touchpad was another thing I thought I’d “get use to”; Battery was due to roaming, again not forseeable from the storefront. All the reports I read neverreally mentioned these issues.
5) The G1, HTC hero, and a couple other phones were the precursors to the droid as far as hardware goes- you know motorola did their homework before building the droid. They also had th “2.0″ advantage- the moment had android 1.5, while the droid had 2.0. You are correct, it did have issues when it first came out, and most of those were fixed with 2.0.1. It’s still rough in some spots, but a hell of a lot better than the blackberry- the free ssh client I got for it makes it worth the value right there, leading into…
6) I actually do ssh into servers to fix them; that’s really the only reason I have a phone.
7) They got my 15% off at the get go, and they will reimburse me for the cost, so getting my choice of phone that they’ll pay for makes up for the inconvenience.
I should also note that it works great as an ebook reader, which I’ve been using to read a couple of books. I did this with the blackberry as well, but this screen is much easier on the eyes (larger/more text on a page).
So while I see your point that it’s not a toy, it’s more like a multitool for my usage… then again I also see tools as toys so I guess it’s a wash.
It sounds to me like you had 2 weeks to locate another 30c box from some other sucker, and offer to buy it from them for $20.
Alan
That was my first instinct, but they were quick to point out that each box has an RFID tag for tracking, so some other schmuck would be credited.
@Shal: I just paid $125 for a Nokia phone from T-Mobile. That got me 1125 minutes and a full year to use them.
This crap $14 Nokia phone was left on for 4 days straight when we were in the hospital having our baby. During that time I called every single family member I had. When we got home and back to the charger the thing was still running like a champ. No smart phone is going to have battery life like that.
Since I’m not required to have an internet enabled phone to do my job I find that the crappy phones that can go a week before needing a charge work great for me.
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