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Why I didn’t buy an iPhone, again.

Jul 24th, 2009
by Robert N. Lee.

So we ordered our new phones today, the T-Mobile myTouch Android phones coming out in a week or so. We are all excited – this is Evonne’s first smart phone or PDA or whatever.

They’re showing up at people’s houses early like they do, I guess, and I think when I did this the last time it was supposed to take eight days and took like two. Anyway, I’m getting lists together of what I need to do as soon as I unpack it.

I was making the list of software I had to install, first thing, and…Locale. The star of the pre-launch Android developer challenges, at least to me, the simple little app that made me wish for two seconds I’d just kept my regular phone and waited a year and a half – in that time, Google announced Android and the first phones hit.

You couldn’t do Locale on an iPhone, due to restrictions Apple puts on developers. And I guess those restrictions make you safer or whatever as a user, but fuck safer. Here’s what I’m going to be able to do with my new phone next week:

I can change anything about the phone based on location. I can have a desktop full of prancing naked ladies and Mentors songs for ringtones and the volume on my phone on high in my house, go out to my car, and all the settings will change for my car. By the time I get to work, my phone will have an inoffensive desktop, the ringtone will change to something subtle, or the phone’ll just go to vibrate. When I visit Grandma, it will have a picture of the Sacred Bleeding Heart on the desktop and play “How Great Thou Art.” None of this will ever involve my taking the phone out and doing anything with it. It’ll just happen.

I can designate the theaters and restaurants I habitually visit as areas where my phone just plain don’t work. Unless it’s That Caller or an emergency, and then it does again. It’s extensible, it’s already integrated with other apps, and you can send Tweets and SMS and set reminders and etc., etc. that are all tied to your location, automatically. Your phone can tell you to charge the battery whenever you walk in the door and call you, crying, if you leave it in the car. It’s FUCKING AWESOME.

But you can’t run a process in the background on an iPhone constantly unless you’re Apple - the phone just doesn’t multitask at all, even for a phone. So you can’t have Locale on an iPhone, or any of the other Android apps that require background processing, although there are rumors…

So that’s why I passed on an iPhone a second time, even though they finally got 3G and the price dropped and maybe you won’t get stuck with AT&T anymore soon. Just…even in the stellar list of winners in the ADC, and some more spectacular work, that one just sang to me. That’s what I want: a phone that knows when it’s supposed to shut the hell up and not be an idiot and I don’t have to tell it how to behave, except the once.

I can just do a lot more with an Android phone and it costs less. Sounds familiar.

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Posted in: Geekery, Work.
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  • chhinnamasta
    My phone needs are modest, and iPhone makes me happy. I didn't even jailbreak it, yet. All that geo-awareness that does sound FUCKING AWESOME, though. Enjoy!

    You guys will have to document the unboxing when these babies arrive.
  • admin
    If your phone needs were modest, you wouldn't need an iPhone. I didn't mean to slight them - they're gorgeous pieces of work, all around, like almost everything Apple makes, and a real advance - not just in terms of tech, but socially. It's not like nobody ever made phones you could do more with before, and nerds like me had Windows CE phones and whatnot way back, but...the iPhone made everybody want to do more and have more control over their phones. This post is me explaining why I chose not to buy one a second time even though they're amazing.

    Oh, and they can do shit my phone won't do, too, and if stuff like showing off photos and zooming in on them and whatnot was a personal priority, or if I wanted to play better games on my phone, or I was a big iTunes user or a bunch of different "ors," I'd get an iPhone.
  • chhinnamasta
    I never said I *needed* anything as fancy as an iPhone. I don't. I got one, because we were renegotiating our cell service (I've been fine with the bare bones Motorola for the past three years). My husband encouraged me to go for the iPhone upgrade, since he wanted to upgrade our plan to 3G. His needs aren't modest, since his research involves handheld GPS devices. Don't get me wrong, I'm a technophile, and I love this beautiful little machine, especially the touch screen interface -- it's a technological marvel. The iPhone has been a godsend while traveling, since it's a source of endless multimedia entertainment. Perhaps what I've enjoyed most is having internet access just about anywhere I go -- I can't deny this has opened up a load of possibilities.

    I carry a small computer with me, now, and it's pretty fucking cool. Now that I have this beautiful 3G phone, I'd miss it, if I had to give it up, but I don't *need* it. I was doing fine with the Motorola.

    I'll tell you what I *am* becoming increasingly dependent on. Our Garmin nüvi.
  • admin
    Yeah, those dedicated car GPS systems are things of beauty, and that's really mostly what I've ended up using a smart phone for, practically: finding things, checking traffic, not driving around for two hours when we don't have to. It's a godsend while traveling.
  • Alain
    In the last twenty years the handset innovations, and the services that go with them have been nothing less than phenomenal. On the other hand cellular coverage and cellular sound quality has been going at a slow crawl. If the rate of progress had been equal we would never have dropped calls and handsets could be used at any spot on the globe, oceans included. I suppose that's why I cancelled my cellular phone service last year.
  • Quick note:

    The final word on the ROF cover controversy may be found ... on MAH blog.
  • Lucinda Andrews
    How does it know if you left it in the car?
  • admin
    I have no idea, I thought that was pretty clearly made up. If you left the phone in the car and the software reacts based on location, it's not going to react. I thought the giveaway in the sentence, really, was the phone calling you. What's it calling you on, exactly? Itself?
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