Searching for a Cell Phone or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Open Markets

Sometimes being an educated consumer can be a pain in the ass. Here's my adventures in cell phone shopping.

Here's where I started: AT&T, 2.5 year old Windows Mobile HTC Tilt, known outside of AT&T as the Tytn II. My usage is probably around 90% data, 8% voice, 2% text. I'm tied onto a family plan with my father. In fact, we were originally on Sprint and signal strength at his house alone is what made us move to AT&T. It cost me my original Pittsburgh number but was better than going off on my own contract.

So that's what I had. Now let me tell you what I wanted. Smartphone. On AT&T that pretty much cut me down to WiMo again or the iPhone. This may come as a shock to those who know me but I latched on to the iPhone when it was first released. You see, I wasn't just looking for a good piece of hardware. While hardware is probably my number one priority, once you spend a couple of years with WiMo you realize that interface is a much closer second than you might have originally thought. And then the iPhone came out. It was shiny, it was usable out of the box (I run SPB shell on my Tilt) and it had what no one can deny Apple: a fantastic interface experience. I was sold.

But all techies know that there is a fundamental choice with new tech. Option one is to early adopt. That's when you get it as soon as it comes out and that comes with a big wow factor. Option two is the prudent revision two. That's when you wait for the early adopters to complain and for the company to release the second version, which is usually what the first version should have been. Essentially you let the early adopters test it for you. It means waiting anywhere from months to a year, which in terms of technology is an excruciatingly long time, but you'll most likely end up with a stable product. I wanted to jump right in but this was an entirely new platform. Would there be enough applications (now called “apps”) released? How was performance on these new handsets? And what's the deal with this new touch screen that can't do handwriting recognition? So I figured maybe waiting for a software update would be a nice compromise. But there was a problem. It wasn't a lack of apps. It was the process of getting apps.

With Windows Mobile there was no consolidated app store. You went around online to individual pages and found apps. You downloaded them and installed them. Microsoft had no hand at all in the process. Apple, in their ease of use and closed system style, made a walled garden of apps. And only the apps they liked made it in. Up until this point there wasn't a lot of restrictions on smartphones. WiMo handsets could be flashed with different OS updates by hand. You could install whatever you wanted. Apple changed that. It turns out that the wall around their garden was very high and the bouncer at the gate was very strict. And sometimes arbitrary. I did not like this. With WiMo I was the gatekeeper. With the iPhone one needed to hack their handset to become the keymaster. Suddenly the iPhone wasn't usable out of the box anymore.

The longer I waited the worse the iPhone looked. That's not strictly true. The iPhone still looked great. It was the Apple infrastructure/baggage that it came with. With each OS update gaining complete control of the iPhone seemed to become more of a hassle. I didn't want a phone where being up to date meant owning a crippled product. If I didn't care about complete freedom I would have taken the iPhone plunge then and there. For some people root access isn't an issue. For me that choice being taken away at the moment of purchase was a deal breaker.

So I waited. A few more WiMo phones came out but nothing all that impressive. It was just more of the same and all things shiny and new were frolicking in Apples fields. But every now and then came a whiff of hope. Palm, a player that had been essentially dead to me since high school, was coding a new phone OS from scratch. And there was talk of Google making a phone. Probably a pipe dream but who knew. And like behemoths of fantasy epics I bid my time and waited.

Suddenly things became exciting. The Palm OS, WebOS, garnered fantastic responses from tech testers. And the G1 came out. The G1 didn't impress me as a phone but as proof of concept it was downright thrilling. I'm a tech-head. It was thrilling. I managed to push down my excitement and recalled what happened last time I felt this way; Apple started to fight its own customers and they broke my heart. I didn't want that to happen again.

Palm kept looking good but it didn't seem for me. It was more interface than OS for my taste. I wanted something better than the the WiMo UI but I do like the option to get my hands dirty in the system when the mood strikes me. The WebOS simply felt... hollow to me. But Android... Android was wooing me with a vengeance. Open source, an app store with the option for 3^rd party installs. An interface worlds beyond Windows Mobile, though still no iPhoneOS. I was set. And then AT&T broke my heart.

The problem became my carrier. They have an exclusive deal with Apple to carry the iPhone. They don't want to introduce competition that would scare away their biggest cash cow. Suddenly people who had hated, and still hated, AT&T were flocking for contracts. Sure, the were carrying new WiMo phones but I didn't want more of the same. I had seen the future of user interaction and hardware. Windows Mobile was not part of that future. So my father and I considered shopping another carrier.

But like that traffic jam in Office Space, you can never be at the right place at the right time. Once we started to shop around two things happened.

1. Windows announced the next WiMo.
2. AT&T announced that they were getting a number of Android phones.

The next Windows Mobile was to be called Windows Phone 7. It was going to be coded from scratch. In fact the whole thing felt like a Sci-Fi channel original movie: assembled from the cast off gimmicks of a number of recent blockbusters. Like Palm, it was to be coded from scratch and focus on a fresh interface designed to stream data to your home screen. Like the iPhone it was to cut open system multitasking and be app store only for installs. In fact, it was pretty much the worst features of the iPhone without the benefit of Apple's wonderful interface or established market. Suddenly Windows went from my safety choice to a non-option. So my father and I looked at the AT&T Androids. And that's when AT&T broke my heart again.

Their first Android was the Motorola Backflip. It was, in essence, a Sidekick for the new generation of smartphones. Except that it started leaking clues. For instance, the search provider was locked into Yahoo. Odd. Also the option to install 3^rd party apps was permanently locked out. It was a highly customized, highly crippled Android phone. Then AT&T let out the specs for a couple more, the Dell Aero and the Samsung Galaxy. Neither blew competing Android sets out of the water and then the news broke about the OS. They would all be locked down. And the provider for search and mail would be locked to Yahoo.

What AT&T did here was to insist that all its smartphone customers be treated like children. Be it Android, iPhone or Windows the user was going to have to go through app store only on locked handsets. In order to get a phone that met my requirements I would have to hack any of these. Suddenly it became obvious what the problem was. AT&T no longer had a single smartphone that was not going to be a downgrade to the freedom I had on my 2.5 yer old Tilt. The only free option would be to buy an unlocked Nexus 1 at full price and even then we're locked into the carrier because of the operating bands on the phone. We'd be paying hundreds of dollars to keep the same service and contract we've had for years. That's not appealing.

That is the point when you know a market is so far from free that it's locked up in a tiny box. There is no good reason that my “ancient” hardware should offer me options that no current phone can. Where's the competition to insure innovation? With systems this closed your only option is to strap in and try to enjoy the ride. If these were airlines you would suddenly realize that you can't bring your own music or books on the plane and there will never be the option to walk about the cabin no matter how clear the weather.

So we worked out a similar contract on Verizon (they have the phones we want and a decent enough data network. Sprint is still out until they improve coverage in our area). It turns out to be a bit cheaper which is nice. We got the HTC Incredible which has specs that should last us a while. The OS is open to 3^rd party installs and that means easily rooted once the Incredible ROM hits the net has already been rooted to custom ROMs are now an option..

Verizon may turn out to be a pain but let's be honest, what cell phone company is pleasant to deal with? In this case we came to realize that in AT&Ts zeal to keep Apple happy as the only feasible smartphone the devil we knew became so clearly the greater of two evils that we couldn't stay with them. When you stick with a service for years and the only choices they provide are more restrictive each time a new option comes out then it's clear that their system is broken.

AT&T, I hope you're happy. It's clear you can only make one customer at a time happy. And that customer's name is Steve Jobs. I wish you two the best. You certainly deserve each other.

EDIT It's been a few weeks with Big Red and the Incredibles (band name?). I'm satisfied and it looks like the iPhone is coming to this network, too. I guess there's no escaping Apple's legion of fan-boys anymore. Of course, the iPhone 4 seems to have more than its fair share of problems...