Is It AT&T Or A iPhone Flaw?
For the last 6 months my iPhone has essentially been a $300 paperweight. If I were to factor in the amount of lost calls and missed opportunities the monthly monetary damage would be in the tens of thousands of dollars.
Despite the fact I could only use my iPhone for phone calls about 30% of the time in my La Jolla home, I stuck with it. I’m a addicted Apple fan boy just like so many others out there. I had a land line telephone for the sole purpose to call people back when the iPhone dropped the call. I didn’t even know my own home phone number because I never received calls on it. I left the ringer off for most of the 6 months.
Piss Off iPhone
Now to be fair, I’m not sure if the blame should be cast at AT&T or at the developers of the iPhone itself. Blogger Cory Watilo had an interesting opinion in his blog post Why The Verizon iPhone Won’t Be Better Than The AT&T iPHone. He concludes that it’s not the network and a flaw in the design of the iPhone. He comes to this conclusion by noticing that AT&T users who have different phones don’t experience the woes that iPhone users do. Therefore it’s probably not the network, but the phone itself.
Cory has a interesting hypothesis. I’m not sure what the truth is, but I do know that it’s damn frustrating to pay $300 for a phone, $116 a month for service and still the damn thing doesn’t work most of the time.
Despite the fact that my phone wouldn’t work even when I lived in one of the most affluent communities in the United States, I still didn’t cancel. Two days ago I moved to West Hollywood and had my fingers crossed that maybe, just maybe, once again I’d be able to reliably use my phone.
Well, I have good news and bad news.
The phone actually seems to work okay. Yay! The bad part is my internet connection via the 3G network is dog shit. It’s atrocious. If it’s not one thing it’s another. My favorite app is Maps, but it’s almost worthless in my new home. Accessing Facebook works about half the time, and when it does work it’s slower than molasses. Damn you AT&T. Or is it damn you iPhone? I’m not sure.
I was speaking with a rep from Verizon last night while canceling my Mifi card and told him of my phone troubles. He gave me some inside info and said I may want to hold off for about 5 days before I make any decision on getting a new phone. He couldn’t tell me what the big news was, but encouraged me to be patient.
Considering I waited around for 6 months like an idiot paying my bill for shotty service, I’m sure I can wait another 5 days to see what other options may exist.
So, are you a iPhone user? How has your experience been? I’d love to know in the comments below. Hopefully you’ve had better luck than I.
