Having scraped change out of the couch, sold off my possessions on eBay, and been given some extremely well-timed birthday gifts of cash money, I finally broke down and bought an iPhone.
Part of me wanted to wait until I got an actual job, but the Sprint network in my neighborhood was crapping out so badly that my crackberry would drain at least once a day. It was damn near unusable, so off I went to the Apple store at the crack of dawn yesterday to fulfill my iNerd destiny.
The iPhone is predictably awesome. Substantially easier to use, save for needing to get used to the virtual keyboard. Apps (and I’ve downloaded nothing but free ones) are a great enhancement to the included programs. Having the full internet, and having it at a damn fast pace, is a substantial improvement over the primitive Crackberry browser.
Making ringtones in GarageBand is a fun time killer. Trying to figure out exactly what little snippets of a song will be fun rather than annoying, then trying to time the loop exactly right so the rhythm holds up over repeated rings is an entertaining challenge. Current ringtone: The first eight seconds of Cake’s “Opera Singer.”
There are a few things that bug me: The iChat outgoing text message noise can’t be turned off and bugs the shit out of me on the phone (oddly, it doesn’t bother me as part of iChat); I really, really wish there was a 64GB version so I could have my entire music library on it; for some reason it refused to mingle contacts I’d initially synced from my computer with MobileMe and I had to hand-delete several hundred duplicates; and the glossy back is the slipperiest thing I’ve ever touched short of a live fish.
Overall, however, I’m mighty pleased with my decision so far. I love that I now only have to carry one device for phone and music, and I’m very, very happy that I have a phone that gets decent reception at my apartment.
As a sidenote, the most ridiculous aspect of this entire process happened when I called Sprint up to pay off my final bill. Their billing system bills a month in advance, so I wanted to pay off my final bill since I was only about a quarter of the way through the month.
Sprint’s rep, of course, told me that I had to wait until after my billing cycle rolled over on the 12th. Which is all well and good, except my payment is due on the 6th. She swore up and down that I wouldn’t get dinged with a late fee unless I was more than 10 days late, though she didn’t seem too surprised when I expressed some skepticism towards that promise.
So we’ll see what that final bill winds up costing me, but frankly, I was ready to pay just about any price to get the hell away from Sprint’s craptastic service.