Naturally, given past behaviors, I was one of first in line to get the iPhone 4. I was so excited.
Two weeks later, I returned the phone. The dropped-call experience was a joke — I don’t think I never completed a single call. And forget iPhone to iPhone. My boss Sam Altman also had an iPhone 4. Every conversation we had would have to be re-started four times.
Then I started to get the “you have no SIM card” error.
Bah. I returned it. The Apple store guys were super helpful, and gave me my money back, re-provisioned my trusty old iPhone 3GS, and told me they’d order me a new one and let me know when it arrived.
I never got the notification.
But it doesn’t matter. I wouldn’t have picked it up anyway. The bumper I’ll just keep as a souvenir.
Then the frustration with my old iPhone started to increase. I am sick and tired of seeing the green “call fail” button. Really sick and tired of it. And it seemed to be happening more and more.
So that, combined with the fact that I am marketing Android Apps at Loopt (I can’t market something I can’t feel) pushed me into the Android world.
I am now the proud owner of a Droid X. It’s a brick. It’s ugly. It whispers “Droid” at me in a creepy post-apocalyptic manner.
There are some odd things to get used to.
The period button is right next to the spacebar key so all my emails.have.periods.between.words.
It’s weird getting used to a physical button/screen button combination. Apple has taught me to rely on the screen purely. On my Droid X, you have to press the home/back/search buttons at the bottom, and other times you press buttons on the screen. That feels like an odd boundary pusher.
The screen and apps and look/feel seems dark, and weird, and sort of male (I can say that … it’s my blog).
But I love that the calendar App merges all my calendars into one. Yay hey. And everything runs so fast! Particularly our Loopt app!
But most I love the Verizon connection. I can finish a call! Though I have to get a headset, because the thing weighs a ton and it feels like holding a laptop up to my ear. But that’s OK. I can deal with that.
Apple better watch out. People are finding alternatives. It’s becoming cool to dislike the iPhone, and renegade and brave to toss it back and Apple and say “you have to do better.” I’m not going to just suck it up because it’s Apple and I’ve loved Apple since I worked on Macintosh software in 1983. (Literally. I really did.) They have a problem. They need to fix it.
