Last night, I purchased an iPhone. Not the new, fancy iPhone 4 that the associates at Best Buy told me would be $99 with a two year contract and then reneged on that when it came time to do the contract, but the older iPhone 3GS. It was $50 at AT&T with a 2-year upgrade. My choices were a new Windows phone, or the iPhone.
I was torn because I didn't really want to get older technology that will be obsolete very soon, but I wasn't excited about the Window's layout on the new phones. I love,
LOVE, my old HTC Fuze(aka HTC Diamond). When I bought it I was coming out of a very bad place. I had finally found a new job after my old company had folded and I had saved up the almost $300 to get it I desired it so much. It was sexy and amazing, with a slide out QWERTY keyboard and full mobile windows suite. It could do things no other phone I'd ever owned could do. I'd made a conscious decision not to buy the iPhone when it came out over two years ago and I didn't regret it. This phone has made it all the way through the 2-year contract despite my intense abuse and foolish decision not to get a screen protector the first day.
But looking at the options before me last night, there just wasn't anything nearly as exciting as my Fuze. So why get a new phone at all? The answer is, apps. (Well that and several phone drops that have left my beautiful phone a little wonky in its operations.) When I purchased this phone several years ago there weren't any apps, at least not as we know them today, and therefore no reason to include them on the device. But in the last ten months or so, I've wished I had the capability. First of all, Weight Watchers offers an app that would make my tracking more efficient. Second of all, I've been obsessed with the idea of an e-reader recently with no practical idea of whether or not I would actually use one. I figured I could download an e-reader app and see if a separate device is worth the extra money. (If I like the idea and convenience of an e-reader, I don't think I'd continually want to read on a back lit screen.)
I was presented with the Sony Ericsson, Windows Phone at my local AT&T store. It was also very attractive and was definitely newer technology. But I really wanted a non-screen QWERTY keyboard and that is simply not offered on the new, new phones anymore. So it came down to the actual apps I knew I would want to download immediately. I did a search on the AT&T medianet for any and all apps and there was the Kindle, Nook, Gutenberg, and Stanza apps that I'd previously seen and envied on my boyfriend's iPhone. Then I tried to find the official Weight Watchers app; it wasn't there. There were a lot of calculators created by other companies but not the one that was already included in my monthly membership fees. I could still access the mobile site by going to the same location I used on my Fuze, but that is cumbersome. I checked on the website today and sure enough it was confirmed that there isn't an actual app for Windows 7, yet.
That fact combined with my general dislike for the layout of the new Windows 7 led me to look at the iPhone. I didn't want to get caught up in the near religious fervor that most iPhone owners have so I have avoided it, but it was the most attractive option to me last night. I couldn't have the QWERTY keyboard I so enjoyed on my old phone so everything was second best in my opinion. It honestly came down to the official, and not so official, apps I would be able to download on either phone. My weigh-ins for the last two weeks have been unsuccessful; I've gained a total of 2.2 pounds in the last two weeks and I'm not sure what I'm doing wrong. So, as much as I hate to admit it, the Weight Watchers app was a big motivator for me. I also enjoy the old school pictures that my sister's girlfriend takes with her iPhone and I'd like to do the same. I like the apps my boyfriend uses on a near daily basis and it's a more cost effective way to see if I like the e-reader.
I think it also satisfies that desire for a new gadget, which may have been the main force behind my obsession with the Kindle & Nook. It could be because so many people have the iPhone and it's such a common piece of technology, but I am not nearly as excited about this phone as I was about my Fuze. But how often does one get that connection to an inanimate object? So I purchased an older model phone, but for a severely discounted price. And in a year I may regret that, but that's a year from now.
Note: The iPhone is a little sassy, though, and could almost match the attitude found in my VW New Beetle. Last night, I was typing a message to my father about what phone I decided to purchase and I wrote "iphone" with a lower-case p. The iPhone auto-corrected my typing so that it read "iPhone" with an upper-case P.
No comments:
Post a Comment