(2009-09-20) Time For New Mobile

I keep threatening ([z2007-12-17-TimeForFancyMobile]), but it's really time to buy new Mobile-s for me and Jihi.

• Verizon signal is horrible in our neighborhood

• Have just bought 1st of 2 AutoMobile-s that will support Blue Tooth phone integration.

• My old phone won't work with either recharger that we have in the house (just sent the one that worked away with my mother-in-law) (had one that I bought at BestBuy, but after a month of use it was failing 70% of the time to stay connected enough to charge, so I tossed it a few days ago).

  • update: bought another charger at BestBuy, realized that I hadn't connected the 1st one properly, so it was my fault.

But will anyone have good service out here?

• Jihi's company gave her a Blackberry that uses T-Mobile and she has found it better than her Verizon service. Though that could also be her crummy old phone.

  • also note that having the GSM Blackberry means she has less need of a World Phone. She still wants a non-company Mobile, but if she uses the company one to phone home from a biz trip, maybe that's ok.

• that would make a good Smart Phone app: record signal strength/quality along with GeoTag and time-stamp (and carrier), upload to aggregation site.

• there's a site that collects some info. They have a db of cell towers (which seems objective but pretty useless (and inaccurate judging by NYC map), and ratings from people, which aren't any more granular than Zip Code (in strucutured-data: ratings include human-entered nearest-intersection). (But there are only ~4 comments for my entire Zip Code anyway.) (And which give Verizon a slight lead, with Sprint and ATT close behind and T-Mobile way back.)

• update: guy at BestBuy says ATT is best GSM choice in the area, but that Verizon is still better than that. (He didn't seem totally clueless.)

• hmm, I think being ATT UVerse customer can get me an especially good rate with ATT for cell, have to call and check that.

  • update: nope, makes no difference.

But what phone?

• Jihi will get an IPhone?

• I'm very tempted by Nokia N900, since I'm comfortable I could move over all the apps/data I have on my Nokia N810, have my Private Wiki, etc. But haven't been wowed by the polish of OS/apps on the platform. On the other other hand, I'm more a believer in the Mobile Web than the competing OS AppStore-s environment, in which case most of the apps don't really matter as much, cool though they may be.

  • Another problem: the 3G is only through T-Mobile.

  • One concern I have is that this will be much more boring than the IPhone/etc. Duncan Cragg noted the pluses of this. But a mix of dull reliability and adaptability is Linux's strength. (Comparing to the instability of Symbian.) Likewise, Symbian is no longer competing with the IPhone, or its old enemy, Microsoft's Windows Mobile. These are full-stack, closed systems under a single central control that is entirely market-driven. The core is opaque, the innovation is entangled in opaque priorities and roadmaps; the future of your precious software and startup is uncertain.

  • Also note I'm irritated by how expensive this will be relative to a carrier-subsidized phone.

• As another Mobile Web contender, I'd be very interested by the Palm Pre if it were GSM (today), and not Sprint.

Oct30 update

• still haven't done anything

• my Verizon phone seems to work a bit better than it used to. Maybe because I did that weird thing to update its roaming-db?

• increasingly tempted by Verizon Motorola Droid. Nice vanilla Android v2. And the handset group is only a half-hour from Barrington Il, so maybe I'll ask them for a DayJob :)