Please keep firing questions as you think of them!
God, what an offer! Thanks!
History: I bought the initial iPhone 2G, first by trying ATT, which failed due to lack of coverage (and poor service reports) so I bought one on-line and use pwnage tool to jailbreak/unlock for TMo and european travel. It just died (after 4 years!). I rather like the iDevice ecology, having macbooks, macmini, ipad, ipod etc, and have an app that is not yet on android but has a poor replacement on android. I like that the apps span ipad/pod/phone too. I'm not a power user, but use phone, web, mail, music, apps, maps, angry birds, ... at least once a day, no more than an hour, I'd say.
I like TMo quite a bit, but am willing to try Vzn, less so ATT .. they still have poor coverage where I live (Santa Fe). I find that the plans my friends have are impossibly expensive, > $90/mo, .. while I pay $58/mo. There are some interesting alternatives such as buy unlocked and use prepaid plans, but this mainly makes sense on GSM, which here means TMo. Even with Vzn, I would prefer a "world phone", thus GSM (Italy 1-2 months/yr). Main negative for TMo is AWS rather than the more standard 3G etc, and would eliminate iPhone unless Edge was good enough, which I haven't found to be the case. I've looked at a lot of alternatives: MVNOs, WiFi "carriers", prepaid, Senior plans (I'm 69) and even cheaper phones + iPod.
If I had my choice, I'd buy an unlocked iPhone, 4 or 4s, and use it on ... hmm, ATT, no, lousy coverage, TMo, no, uses non-compatible broadband. Well what's left?
1 - See if the Vzn iPhone 4s is OK, get the european SIM unlock, and see if I can avoid $90/mo bills.
2 - Suck it up, embrace android, and go with TMo. They seem to have OK phones. They have brilliant plans, both contract and pre-payed. And are way less than $90/mo. They've saved my skin more than once with problems traveling.
3 - Buy a prepaid GoPhone ATT SIM and try it on unlocked phone to see if coverage has improved. Then try ATT + iPhone and see if I can avoid $90/mo bills. I also prefer their more standard broadband, but not a big deal.
That sounds like Pogue's great "I Want An IPhone" video, but I really am open to change. The difficulty is the "gotchas": plans that are really expensive, having duplicate apps for android and iOS (pad/pod/phone), phones that I don't trust (yet), mobility (I really find it hard to understand folks leaving europe out of their plans, but then...), batteries that die if I forget to turn off x,y,z and kill app a,b,c ... and billions of cellular issues that I don't really understand as well as I'd like (TMo about to die? Why do plans cost so much?, WTF w/ AWS?)
So that's it! And I really thank you for your clear explanation of some of the android world that I didn't "get".
-- Owen
On Mon, Oct 31, 2011 at 4:12 PM, Chris Feola
<[hidden email]> wrote:
Hi Owen,
Yes, Android phones are open. There are two paths for this:
1. Download updates yourself. Lots of places to do this, the best of which is generally regarded to be CyanogenMod
http://www.cyanogenmod.com/2. Wait for your manufacturer to stream you updates.
Plenty of good reasons to do both. The best manufacturers -- I like HTC -- are consistently tweaking and adding features. CyanogenMod tends to be faster to the big updates. Use what you like.
There has been some controversy about locked bootloaders, but everyone has pretty much backed off of that now.
As to battery life, I'm sorry if I was unclear. The Sensation is as good or better for battery life when you use it the same way. But you won't. If you keep that quarterHD screen lit for four hours non-stop reading Heinlein on your Kindle app while streaming
Pandora...yeah, you're going to need to recharge. If you only flick the screen on when you hear a text come in, not so much.
Please keep firing questions as you think of them!
cjf