My first iPhone will be delivered a week from today according to the email I received from Verizon Wireless. Yes, I ordered from them, why not? I will probably be getting the extra Apple care bit too, mostly because I can be a bit of a spaz sometimes.
Time for the app recommendations. Pick 2 and leave them in the comments below!
UPDATE – Just checked my order status. I was originally supposed to get this on the 14th. Status has been updated with a delivery date of the 21st. Tech sites are all reporting that the 4s sold like crazy (AT&T is reporting 200k units sold before noon) and the Apple Store is reporting a ship date of 1-2 weeks.
UPDATE 2 – Earlier today I received my tracking number from FedEx which confirmed that I should be receiving my iPhone Friday before 3:00PM MNT (AZ).
I guess I have an excess amount of magnetic energy eminating from my person. Perhaps I don’t properly worship the correct gods. Maybe I have the wrong haircut. Maybe, just maybe, I’m not cool enough. Whatever the case, I have the worse luck with mobile phones.
This Android device was perfectly ok until it started crashing after I finished each call. So it was replaced with another. The replacement was a newer device that lacked the build quality of the first. It also came preinstalled with the previous devices issues, and then some.
Sure it crashes when I end a call. Sure, if I pull the phone away from my face and put it back it disconnects the call. I mean, what phone doesn’t do this now. As a bonus, this phone also refuses to provide any notifications from any of the apps that I have installed like Facebook, Twitter, G+ (which I mostly blame Google for) and SMS messages.
These are all problems that I never read about. Problems that nobody else seems to have.
I’m going to be charging up the Storm tonight and activating it this weekend. It has crappy internet, but at least it will make a damned phone call and let me know when someone is trying to leave me a message somewhere.
I think the problem stems from the fact that I still use my telephone for voice communications. I know this makes me the odd man out, but I still use about 400 minutes per month talking to people, and anther 400 minutes talking with other Verizon Wireless customers (mostly family). Doesn’t anyone bother checking this kind of functionality anymore?
I’m going to end up carrying both devices for a time too. The Blackberry, which rules for SMS and email, is completely lame for everything else. Since I spend the bulk of my time in WiFi coverage areas, I’m going to keep the Dinc around (in Airplane mode) to use as my portable hand-held computer.
Lame, right?
What I would like is to be able to upgrade to an iPhone. From what I can tell, the iPhone doesn’t have any issues when it comes to making and receiving voice calls. At least none that I have heard about.
As I keep saying, my telephone, first and foremost, needs to have the ability to reliably make and receive phone calls with sending and receiving SMS messages being a very close second. Right now, the device I have doesn’t do either of those well or reliably so it’s time to switch back to something that does.
When last we spoke about my never ending problems with cell phones, I had just received my 2nd Droid Incredible (Dinc). The first was crashing after a call. No big deal. Replacement arrived 2 days early. I was up and running again in a little less than an hour.
Then, starting last week, this phone started acting up. It also exhibited the same crash-after-a-call problem that my last Dinc had. A problem that was easily corrected by putting the phone to sleep and waking it back up again using the handy dandy switch at the top of the phone.
That stopped working last week as well.
Today, after finishing a call with Verizon Wireless, my phone crashed so hard I had to do a battery pull to correct it. Luckily, I even got the sleep/wake switch to work as well.
I was on the call initially because I’m a few days behind on my bill, a fact I will be correcting on Friday. Since I had them on the phone, I figured it was a good time to review my plan since I’ve been making changes to it for the first half of the year (mainly not having teh lad on it anymore). My new friend at VZW looked at my minutes used for the past 3 months (less than 400 billable per month) and said I would be a good candidate to go to the $59.99 plan. Sweet! That’s $30 less than my existing plan, which will pay for my data (still unlimited BTW, but more on that later).
And since she was so helpful, I thought I would bring my telephone woes up to her. She said I would need to call back on a different phone to do troubleshooting and texted me the number to call. While that was happening, I think she was reviewing my account a little bit more (besides minutes and data used) because no sooner did I get the text message with the 800 number to call I received a 2nd with her email address.
She said to me, when I’m ready (about 2 weeks), to email her back and she would get me going on an early upgrade!
Did I ask? Nope. Did I get angry? Nope. Was she super professional, very nice and extraordinarily helpful? YES!
I swear I never get bad service from VZW. I’ve said it here many times before. Anytime I have a problem they fix it, more often than not the first time without having to talk to more than 1 person. Ever.
[SHORT VERSION]
I’ll be getting an iPhone sometime in July. Stay tuned for details
I’m still putting the finishing touches on the new theme, but this just couldn’t wait.
In the mail today I received my 12th replacement mobile phone from Verizon Wireless. Twelve times I’ve had problems with a phone. Twelve times I’ve had to call 611 or visit my local store. Twelve times I’ve had to reinstall apps and restore from backup.
Twelve.
At first it was comical. By the time I got to my 5th Blackberry Storm, I was pretty angry. By the time I got to my 5th Blackberry Storm I was giggling. When I bought the HTC Droid Incredible last August, 6 months BEFORE the iPhone became available on Verizon, I thought my nightmare of crappy phones was over.
And my nightmare was over. At least it has been for the past 10 months. Up until then, the Dinc has been problem free. Then it started crashing after ending a phone call. Turns out, the sensor that controls the screen when you pull the phone away from your head was going out. “No problem” says my guy at the Verizon Wireless store. We’ll sort you out.
Which they did, in record time as usual.
I will say that it is easier to recover on an Android Phone than it was on the Blackberry. From hard reset to complete took less than an hour and that includes setting up all of my apps and adding my 6 email addresses and 6 Twitter accounts back to the phone. I would imagine that it is equally easy on an iPhone.
I’m just getting tired of doing it. I am told that there is a chance I might qualify for an early upgrade in August instead of having to wait until next April. At this point, it really doesn’t matter. I’m just tired of swapping phones.
If I had a dollar (US$1.00) for every time I forgot the battery for my ‘good’ camera, I would have exactly 2 dollars (US$2.00). Really not that big of a deal, but I also did not have my old and busted and trusty Panasonic DMC-TZ3. What did I have?
My Droid Incredible.
Again, not that big of a deal, but this was for work. And the Canon takes really good photos, especially since I think I might have figured out how to actually get it to take good photos. And the photos get used to create documents that our sales staff then uses to help sell our products.
But I only had the Droid Incredible. And my only battery was a hour away and an hour back.
I kept remembering everyone that has ever told me it’s the photographer, not the camera. This week I put that to the test and, if I’m honest, everyone was right. The photos below all came directly out of my phone. Ok, maybe not directly in the strictest sense, but if directly-via-photoshop counts, then yes, directly from my phone.
Sure I could have used an app like Vignette to process them, but in my experience with this phone, the photos that it produces aren’t suitable for my needs. Photos apps on the Droid introduce a lot of noise, do weird things with color and only make a photos that fans of Instagram seem to like.
While I had the right tool for the job, I had the wrong tool. So, I made due with a little trickery. And I think they turned out pretty ok.
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 United States License.
Feel free to use my stuff, just Be sure to let me know.
