I have finally made the decision to switch from a plain old “cheap” cel phone to a phone that has data, web access, email etc etc. It has been a long road for me to get to this point. I have watched many friends use these smart phone devices (think: Iphone) and have drooled at the thought. What has kept me from getting one up until now? I absolutely despise monthly service charges. My wife and I have managed to keep our bill down to $50 per month for two phones for a long time. I don’t like spending $50 a month for the service but there is no question that it is worth it for the peace of mind that comes with always being able to reach each other in case of emergencies or for convenience. With company discounts I might be able to add data to a new plan for about $20 per month so it’s really only a delta increase of $20 per month. The real question is whether I’ll get enough benefits from the phone to justify the extra expenditure. I have a sneaking feeling that I will…..
It’s finally time for me to suck it up and join the smart phone crowd. I have considered buying a Tmobile G1 or HTC Windows based device but I have memories of borrowing friends phones and thinking that the interfaces were so clunky and “un-user friendly” that I just can’t bring myself to buy one. That leaves only one option at this point. Like millions of other people on the planet I’m thinking I’ll probably buy an Iphone. Unfortunately there couldn’t be a worse time to buy an Iphone. With all the rumors floating around out there, it’s pretty clear that they will be launching a new Iphone in the June time frame. I’m not going to finally join the ranks of the smart phone elite only to have it obsolete within a couple months. (Sure it would work fine for the two year contract but if I’m this close to the new launch, I might as well wait).
The other phone that is generating a lot of hype is the Palm Pre. I’ve done some reading about it and it appears to have excited a lot of industry people. While it’s going to be much weaker on the application front (Apple seems to have the corner on the market for applications due to the app store), maybe it will make up for it with other features. I just submitted my name to Palm as a potential “beta” user where they will send me a phone to use for 6 months and pay for the data/phone plan. Of course, they haven’t selected me at this point, but if they do, it could throw another wrench in to my plan to buy an Iphone. Who knows, maybe the Palm device has a better user experience than the Iphone. If I get selected to participate, you’ll know it because I’ll be putting multiple posts up talking about it with a theme towards getting my money’s worth out of it with increased productivity and accessibility.
Either way, now that I’ve made up my mind to go the smart phone route, it’s going to be very hard to wait to pick one up, whatever it ends up being.