iWant an iPhone

Before I get flamed for this, let me come out and say that I have not understood the hype surrounding the iPhone. However, being a gadget guy, I am suddenly feeling like I am missing out by not having the latest, and most hyped about toy in quite some time.

But I digress. Why do I want an iPhone? Let me count thy reasons.

1. I currently carry two phones. I need a Blackberry or other type of smartphone to check email on.  It is a work necessity.  But Blackberries are terrible phones.  The voice quality just atrocious.  I need a phone to be first and foremost a phone.  But I would love to carry one phone around and not look like Mr. Technology.  Isn't part of technology supposed to be that it is low key or that it is fashionable.  Carrying around two phones is neither.
2. Having a full web browser like Safari on my phone would be fantastic!  Some websites just don't render well on micro browsers that are found on other phones today.
3. The stock widget is just what I need to keep tabs on my day trades when I am out of the office.

That's a fine list.  But nothing really iCan't live without.  In fact there are more reasons I don't want an iPhone than there are reasons iDo.

1. The AT&T network is junk.  Despite GSM being the standard for the world's mobile phone infrastructure, and the convenience of SIM cards (ahem, on unlocked phones), I have always found CDMA technology to deliver much clearer sound quality.  AT&T may brag about the least number of dropped calls, but I have always found the problem with AT&T just that: it doesn't drop calls when it should.  I would rather drop a call during a tower handoff than suffer warbling noise and be asking people to repeat themselves after not being able to understand their last two sentences.
2. The AT&T network is junk.  Earlier I posted about my yagi antenna experiment.  My sprint wireless card delivers 1.5Mb/s downstream data on 1xEVDO rev. A.  My Samsung SPH-A900 via Bluetooth gave me 800-900kbps on EVDO rev.0. AT&T's EDGE is claimed to deliver only 300kb/s and my AT&T blackberry never actually gets that speed. My stance on the junkiness of AT&T's network (part 2) will change once UMTS / HSDPA comes to my home town. Having never tried it, I can't comment, but from what I understand those technologies blow EVDO away.
3. My contract doesn't expire with Sprint for quite some time.  I'm not that desperate to make a fashion statement that I'm going to pay for a new phone plus an early cancellation fee on my existing service.
4. Blackberry's push email is really quite good.  I'm not about to trade that off for an unknown.  iPhone's email may ultimately be better, but at this point I don't know, and its not worth the risk.
5. Having service through two providers through Sprint for my main phone and AT&T for my business account blackberry provides good redundancy in the event of a tower outage or some other service problem (it has happened to me several times).

Now I'll be honest, while I like the Sprint network better, I hate the fact that Sprint always gets the hand-me-down phones.  Its about time that Sprint get some first-rate, brand new phone designs before everybody else.  Oh, I don't count the paper thin Samsung that doesn't offer me anything noteworthy over my SPH-A900.

You're probably thinking you just wasted three minutes reading this, and you're probably right.  But I just couldn't be a self-respecting tech geek without having some sort of iPhone entry on my blog.

-RMz