I, Phone!

(Lamest post title, EVER.)

So, as you may have deduced from previous posts in which I said I got an iPhone, I got an iPhone. HW got one as well, as getting the AT&T family plan saves money! Even so, our monthly phone bill is going up by about 50%, which is a relatively small price to pay for having completely changed our lives for the better.

Am I comparing the iPhone to organized religion? Of course not. There's no comparison. The iPhone is far better. I have an idea for a comic in which Steve Jobs crashes through a brick wall, yells "OH YEAH!" and then I and several of my friends drink his contents with straws. Get it? He contains and/or is made of KoolAid! A KoolAid that I drink from with extreme prejudice.

If you haven't played with one yet, here's how the iPhone delivers the awesome: it is a phone, an mp3 player, a "camera," an organizer, and let's face it the thing is just a computer in hand-held form. There is little I can do on my MacBook that I can't do on my iPhone. I can't really compose and record music, or do photoediting, but those are not things I'm likely to have to do while, say, driving to work.

The interaction is entirely through the touch screen, which is basically "Star Trek: The Next Generation" come to life. It doesn't need many physical buttons because if you need to hit a button it will provide one for you on the screen, and through the magic of electricity it detects your finger and makes FUN.

I've downloaded, conservatively, 3,481 applications to it (3,300 of which I've later removed for being sucky), with an ease that is rivaled only by every other Apple product. Even better, it has the ability to interact directly with the iTunes store over the 3G cellular network, so you can download podcasts and songs directly. There's even an app or 10 that helps you figure out what song you may be listening to somewhere by starting the app and holding the phone to the speaker. Whaaaaaa? Yes. It works; at the hockey game last week, a song came over the loudspeakers that could be described as "reasonably boss," and I just started the Midomi app and held my phone in the air. 10 seconds later, it reported: "Into Philadelphia," by "IKE." Whoever that is. Either way, I downloaded the tune on Amazon later (I don't fully trust Apple's DRM situation yet) and 'twas rad. It even has the ability to connect to local WiFi networks, if you want to do some hardcore downloads.

Okay, there are a few cons, that I've so far discovered:

• The keyboard, being completely non-tactile, can be challenging. It's easier in landscape mode (in many applications, if you turn the phone sideways, an accelerometer in the phone detects this and turns the display to match...totally sweet), where the keyboard is wider, but you can't do this in email or SMS text mode, also known as the applications where this would be most useful. That's something I'd like to see fixed in an update, Apple.
• The iTunes system limits you to downloading files no larger than 10MB if you're using the 3G cellular network. If you want anything bigger, which includes a lot of audio podcasts and virtually every videocast, you need to find a WiFi network or download it on your regular computer and sync it over. This is frustrating because the place where I'm most likely to want to download podcasts is at work, where we have no WiFi network and I can't get to the iTunes store, let alone actually install iTunes on my work lappy. If I remember, I'll grab them at home, but I am not good at remembering.
• Some of the applications are, let's say, a tad unstable. Right now things are working okay, but sometimes I'll install or uninstall an app, and suddenly almost every other downloaded app just crashes on startup. I usually have to delete and reinstall something, and then they all work fine. Weird, and a little disconcerting, given Apple's usual reliability.
• The camera kinda sucks. The resolution isn't actually too bad (I think it's 2MP, which is about on par with a cheap digital camera from 2002), but there's no flash, and the sensor is pretty noisy. It seems to do okay outdoors, but indoors, even with reasonably strong light, the pictures are fairly horrible; blurry and lots of artifacts. Also, it doesn't do video. What the hell? Even my Crapberry does video.

Okay, that's enough negativity. Let me tell you about some of the other awesomes:

• You can put Pandora on this thing, and it's actually astoundingly reliable. No lag, no pauses in the tunes. It just does its Pandora thing. After I installed that, I also found the in-many-ways-better Slacker Radio, which just presents you with dozens of radio stations, instead of having you seed your own with song requests. You can still tell it to get rid of tunes you don't like with the "ban" function, and you can mark favorites for more-frequent playing. Like Pandora, you're limited as to how many songs you can ban or skip in an hour (6), but unlike Pandora you can upgrade to a paid version that lets you skip as much as you want. There's also a Public Radio app, that basically finds the non-commercial radio stations to you and links you to their web feeds. Obviously you can just do this via FM if you have a regular radio handy, but you can also find stations all over the country, not just the ones nearest you.
• GPS. Oh, the GPS. It can do so many things. Obviously, it comes with a map application (Google Maps, in fact), but you can allow any application to use it, so people have come up with stuff that uses it to find local restaurants of great deliciousness (Urbanspoon) or even just track your own movements, if you find it useful to know where you've been (like after jogging or biking, if you want to know your distance). There's even an app that automates finding your car, if you're parked somewhere in a big city and got kinda lost.
• The Safari browser is so pimp compared to the Blackberry browser that I can't even describe it. If you have Blackberry Curve, you know how you can't view half of all websites because they're too large or complicated for the BB browser to handle? Yeah, the iPhone doesn't have that problem. You know how the BB browser handles java like I handle discussions of testicular surgery (lots of fainting and dispersions cast on my manliness)? The iPhone doesn't have that problem.

  It doesn't have Flash yet, which is weak, but apparently Top Men are Working On It.

• You know how, if you have your Blackberry set up for IMAP to a regular email account, deletions from a webmail or Outlook client aren't reflected on the Blackberry? Yeah, not a problem with the iPhone. It was a little frustrating setting up my matthearn.com email address because I don't have SSL working, but a little googling and I had it down. And this thing allows me to view all my folders (well, 200 messages max in each, but still), unlike the Blackberry which just sees my Inbox.
• I should stop burning the Blackberry, but the Facebook app for Blackberry sucks. You can see stuff, but can't do much. The iPhone one works great, although it has some of its own problems (clicking on some of your notifications of photo comments doesn't take you to the photo, but to the commenter's wall).

HW is not as thoroughly excited about her iPhone, mostly because her last phone was made by Archimedes during his downtime between Peloponnesian Wars, and she's confused by modern technology. But she'll come around. I'll have to buy her a MacBook Pro for Christmas, which is fine with me.

In which I hate technology, and technology hates me right back.(All up in my grill, yo.)

It's heck of warm out today (low 60s), so, being a forward-thinking individual, I thought to myself yesterday "I should TOTALLY go running at work and try to eliminate the enormous amount of fat located between my crotch and my boobs," and brought in running clothes and a towel to store in my locker downstairs in the poop room that has showers. And lo, I took an early lunch, went out, and ran 2.75 miles before the agonizing chest pain and developing foot blister made me stop.

Have I reached my point yet? Not even remotely.

So I came back in, showered, and grabbed lunch, which consisted of a Salisbury "Steak" made of, as far as I can tell, pressed gerbil cremains, along with green beans and cheesy potatoes au gratin (a quality side, to be sure). A few hours later, I realized I was still pretty hungry, so I said to myself, oh man, the SNACK machine will hook me up with FLAVOR.

So I wandered into the snack room, bought a bottle of Diet Coke, and then studied the snack machine for delectables. Sure enough, they had some kind of Apple/Cinnamon-flava'd Danish, all over which I desired to jump. I attempted to stick my dollar into the machine, but was foiled! It would accept no bills. And I had just used the bulk of my change on my drink. Bemused, I pressed a few buttons on the front of the machine, which showed no sign of even being powered on. Argh!

I wandered aimlessly around the halls, looking for another snack machine, and finally found one. Sadly, it had no Apple/Cinnamon-flava'd Danish. It did, however, have a three pack of chocolate cupcakes of the type I subsisted on in high school, so I inserted my dollar and pressed the proper buttons. The machine whirred for a moment, then beeped, and a small light appeared next to some words reading "Please make another selection."

"What?" I replied. "But the other selections are not what I desire. Don't mess with me, machine, I COLD RAN 2.75 MILES EARLIER AND AM NOT ONE WITH WHICH YOU SHOULD TRIFLE." And I pressed the buttons again.

"Please make another selection."

I tried to outwit the machine by requesting my dollar back, which came back in quarters, and inserting exact change, but I came to the conclusion that whoever inserted the latest supply of foodstuffs had improperly loaded the chocolate cupcakes. In the end I realized that the machines were involved in some kind of conspiracy not to sell me anything that might increase the amount of lipids bonded semi-permanently to my stern. I relented, bought a small package of peanut butter crackers, and went back to my desk to weep silently.

I've had my Sanyo Katana for almost four months now, so I figure it's time a little review, so I can let you know whether or not it's awesome or Teh Suczk.

You may recall my short post a few months ago when I bought it and alerted the world that you could actually call me (the previous phone had been broken for a while). At the time, I was totally enamored with my new little flip-phone, and now that the initial puppy love has dissipated, it's time to take a hard look at the pros and cons, yo.

Pros:

• It's super-slim. Seriously, it's like a half-inch thick. It would fit comfortably in the rear pocket of my jeans, even with my gigundous black girl booty, if I wasn't afraid of sitting on it and crushing it with Teh Fatne$$.
• I can hear people on it, and they can hear me. This may seem like a basic thing, but after the problems I had with the last phone, this is a major improvement.
• HUGE screen. For websurfing it's still a tad small, but I was able to download Google Maps' free mobile client for it, and now I never get lost! Which is teh sweet.

Cons:

• You can use it as a wireless broadband device, which is pretty cool, but Sprint wants you to pay $40 a month for the service. With Sarah's phone, which is a bit older, you can do it for free. What a gyp. $40 a month, which is about what I pay for 3Mb/s cable modem access, for something no faster than about a 38400-baud modem. No thanks, losers.
• The ringtones are too soft. All the ringers are too soft, in my opinion. Most of the time, that's good, since I don't need the thing playing the theme from "The Greatest American Hero" (Sarah's personal ringtone) at 110 decibels while I'm at, say, the proctologist, but when I'm driving in my car and singing along with "My Sweet Escape" by Gwen Stefani, I usually can't hear it. Which of course is when wives, when they are pregnant, go into labor. (Note: HW is NOT currently pregnant, for which she thanks Baby Jesus.)
• This is a biggie: the stupid side button keyguard is set up in the most ridiculous possible way. The phone, like many others, has little buttons on the side that perform a variety of tasks, like controlling volume, scrolling through the phonebook, and, while the phone is closed, activating the speaker phone and dialing the most recent number. Since I keep my phone in my pocket, and since I wear very, very tight pants, this is bad, because if I don't turn on the keyguard the phone continually dials people, the end result of which is my father-in-law saying "hello? hello?" over and over again to my junk.

  Not cool.

  You'd think you could just set the keyguard and not have a problem, but get this: you can disable the keyguard by just holding the button down long enough. Which happens at least twice a week because, as I mentioned, I WEAR TIGHT PANTS. (Everything's tight when you are 45% ass.) This is the major flaw in the phone, in my opinion; I'm hoping they issue a firmware patch that allows you to completely disable the side buttons when the phone is closed.

Final verdict? A solid B+, which is far better than any other phone I've had. (The last phone probably started out a B and ended up as an F------------ because by the end it didn't actually function as a phone; it was more like a $30 a month pocket watch.)