Yesterday, I got the last 4G iPhone in Vegas

[SaltyDawg]

FYI guys (TheMulletMutilator) Sprint has officially launched 4G in SLC. I could get a signal here and there depending on where I was ever since I bought the Evo on launch day, but I guess it's official now:
https://community.sprint.com/baw/co...-wireless-users-can-now-enjoy-the-power-of-4g

 

[KatieMCR]

Salty I have question for you that is somewhat off-topic. What media player do you use on your computer? I've been thinking about ditching iTunes, but haven't found a suitable replacement. Wondering if you, or anyone else, might have any recommendations.

 

[Chad Feldheimer]

do you get bandwidth caps on 4G?

For instance if I wanted to get it for my laptop does it have like the 5GB download a month limit like some of the other wireless services?

 

[Scat]

I've got two new macbook pros, a macbook, a mac pro, an iPad, three iPhones, two iPod shuffles and more iPods than I care to count. I am a techno junkie.

Fixed.

 

[VINYLONE]

I love how emotional salty gets over cell phones.

Anyway, I've got an iphone 3GS. Good phone. My service is pretty damn good...very rarely drops calls. Ive got friends out here who are into the HTC's and what not so Ive had the opportunity to play with them. I dont like the EVO's home page....just too busy. And the feel of the phone is rather plastic-y. To each his own I guess.

 

[SaltyDawg]

Salty I have question for you that is somewhat off-topic. What media player do you use on your computer? I've been thinking about ditching iTunes, but haven't found a suitable replacement. Wondering if you, or anyone else, might have any recommendations.

I use Winamp.

do you get bandwidth caps on 4G?

For instance if I wanted to get it for my laptop does it have like the 5GB download a month limit like some of the other wireless services?

There is no limit on 3G or 4G. It's flat out unlimited data.

 

[SaltyDawg]

I love how emotional salty gets over cell phones.

Anyway, I've got an iphone 3GS. Good phone. My service is pretty damn good...very rarely drops calls. Ive got friends out here who are into the HTC's and what not so Ive had the opportunity to play with them. I dont like the EVO's home page....just too busy. And the feel of the phone is rather plastic-y. To each his own I guess.

You may not have liked your friend's home page, but unlike the iPhone, you can customize the home page however you want it. So it's only as "busy" as you make it. You can also have several different home pages for different environments, each one customized how you want it to be (work, home, out with friends, whatever) and easily set which one is currently being used. They call these "scenes" and you can have up to 7 of them.

 

[VINYLONE]

You may not have liked your friend's home page, but unlike the iPhone, you can customize the home page however you want it. So it's only as "busy" as you make it. You can also have several different home pages for different environments, each one customized how you want it to be (work, home, out with friends, whatever) and easily set which one is currently being used. They call these "scenes" and you can have up to 7 of them.

How do I change the phones feel? To get it from feeling like a toy of sorts? Are there removable shells?

 

[default]

I wonder if they will recall the iphone 4 for the left hand user flaw that is being talked about in the media.

 

[SaltyDawg]

How do I change the phones feel? To get it from feeling like a toy of sorts? Are there removable shells?

There are tons of shells for it. I use the full body zagg invisible shield though, so that's how mine feels no matter what it is made of.

Basically, the entire front of the device is a screen, and the entire back of the device is a removable battery cover.

 

[CONAN]

I know it seems ridiculous, but yes, thers is a lot you are missing out on, lol.

Give me an example.

 

[Scat]

Give me an example.

My thoughts exactly. What on earth am I missing out on that would increase the quaility of my life?

 

[Hearsky]

The current #1 in the MSN customer Service Hall of Shame. Is it all people just trying to get credits for things they should be paying for? Here are some examples:
https://moneycentral.msn.com/commun...oter=Show&linktarget=_parent&pagestyle=money1

I have no loyalty to any cell phone company. I've ported my number into and out of all the major companies more times than I could count.

Like Conan said, he's not the guy that wants the latest and greatest phone. Well, I AM that guy. So I have tried them all, several times. And like pretty much everyone else that has tried them all, I can tell you Sprint has by far the worst customer service I have ever experienced, with any company, in any field.

Their prices are great, their product (the actual cell service) is not bad, and right now they have the best phone lineup too. But, their reps break promises left and right with no accountability, they have no problem hanging up on you, if you get transferred there is a good chance you are getting disconnected, the incredible amount of time spent on hold is frustrating, the reps have no idea about anything and often sound like parrots reading the Sprint website verbatum when you ask them a question that the website doesn't adequately explain, and it goes on and on.

I can't imagine anyone actually liking Sprint's customer service. Sprint themselves admits it's horrible and says they are trying to fix it (they even had an ad campaign where the CEO was giving out an email address to get to his office and bypass it altogether, which turned out to just be more of the same but over email instead).

All I can tell you is, if you think Sprint's customer service is great, wait til you finally leave Sprint someday and try anyone else. You'll woner why you put up with it for so long and kick yourself for not knowing what you were missing.

And to Hearsky, I'd put my PC's against your Macs anyday. Your work may have the supposed latest and greatest, but if they aren't working properly then someone obviously screwed something up. And even better is that in 2 or 3 years, when those systems aren't the latest and greatest anymore, you can upgrade the hardware in them and make them the latest and greatest again. Keep in mind though, most companies install all kinds of stuff and configure the computers in a certain way and it usually hurts the performance. They don't want the end users doing certain things, so they have to lock out certain features and load it up will all kinds of bloatware. They also have to configure it to be remotely configured and updated, get most of it's settings and data from a remote server, and even run apps off a remote server on a network with hundreds of other users. In almost all cases, if you take a corporate computer and give an average joe an identical model (that hasn't been configured for corporate use) the average joe's will have a way better performance.

Speaking of working properly, what do you do when you go to a friend's house and they have something you want to put on your iPod/iPhone? Do you hope they have the 3rd party app (iTunes) installed so you can communicate with it? I prefer to just pop mine in and every computer (PC, Linux, and Mac) sees it as a flash drive and I can transfer whatever I want to it. No need to have anything special installed.

Someday all the Apple fans will wake up and realize they have been getting taken to the cleaners all this time. Freedom to use your device however you want is better than the locked down, walled garden that Apple restricts their users too.

You are correct Salty, somebody did screw them up. I work for one of the largest agencies in Washington state and MS is our service provider.

 

[SaltyDawg]

Give me an example.

My thoughts exactly. What on earth am I missing out on that would increase the quaility of my life?

1: Any website that has flash (which is most of them these days).
2: Google Voice (pretty awesome, too bad Apple rejected the app)
3: Wireless tethering. Should you need internet access on a computer for whatever reason- maybe you need to download a file and burn it to a disk, or upload some files that are on your computer, or your friend needs to get online for something.
4: 4G (someday you'll never consider a phone without it, at that time you'll know what you've been missing out on)
5: Use as a flash drive. Works on any computer or any stereo that has a USB port- which is pretty much any car stereo in any car I get in these days. Go to lunch with your coworker, you can connect your phone to his stereo and play the recording you made when he farted while giving a seminar or something (or just the good tunes you have because all he has is the crap his kids left in the car or whatever).
6: Cheaper (saving money is always good)
7: No worries about apps getting rejected. And this happens all the time- like the wireless tethering app, sling player (over 3G), and just about any app that uses a lot of data- I know Apple sometimes later approves them after initially rejecting them, but you get them right away on every other platform with no worries about it never getting approved. You could have Google Voice right now, for example.
8: Standardized and modular components. Things like a removable battery that you can replace with a different size/capacity if you want- or even carry an extra battery if you think it will run out on you, microsd cards that you can swap out and into your new phone when you replace it so you have all your data in a matter of seconds (you could, theoretically, have a video on a microsd card, pop that into your phone, connect your phone to a tv, and go over game videos on the team bus) USB and HDMI connections so regular connections on any stereo/tv/computer/charger will work with it with no special proprietary cables. It's pretty awesome being able to easily connect my phone to any tv and show whatever video I want, without a special cable needed. You could probably make all kinds of good use of this feature as a coach (especially when you combine it with an 8 megapixel camera that records video at 720p high def- halftime *** chewings could include video of the screw ups).
9: No need for proprietary software to transfer files to and from it. If I go to my dad's house and he has a video/picture/document/song/powerpoint presentation/whatever that he wants to give me, I can get it by connecting a USB cable and not worrying about him having iTunes or even him having the internet. And it works the other way too- if my dad tells me his computer isn't working properly I can have copies of whatever app needs to be reinstalled on my phone, back up all his data onto my phone, and get him up and running with nothing more than my phone and a USB cable.
10: Wireless sync. No need to ever even connect a cable to sync all your data. And no propriatery software required either.
11: No data caps. No need to worry about getting a huge bill or even getting data cut off for using too much.

There are tons of things that could be on this list, but these immediately jumped out at me. You may or may not care about them. But then, I'll say again, Apple will eventually update the iPhone OS again. When they do, the features they add will probably already be available on other phones (as they always have been). So if you have ever been happy with features they added in the past, just know that you were missing out up to that point, and it is likely to happen again.

 

[SaltyDawg]

You are correct Salty, somebody did screw them up. I work for one of the largest agencies in Washington state and MS is our service provider.

I don;t know if you are being serious or sarcastic, but just to make sure you understand...
The larger the agency does NOT mean the better the performance. Not at all. In fact, the larger the agency you work for is very likely to mean worse performance. Why? Because you are conecting to a larger network, with more users. Not only that, but you probably have more stricter policies and more bloatware on the machines.

When you load a roaming profile on a network that has 100 other users all trying to load theirs at the same time, it will surely be a lot slower than if you were at home trying to log onto your home computer. And if you are running a program that is installed oin a server across a network, it will surely run slower than if you were at home running a program on your home computer.

And this is true no matter who your service provider is or how good you think your network admin is.

 

[CONAN]

1: Any website that has flash (which is most of them these days).
2: Google Voice (pretty awesome, too bad Apple rejected the app)
3: Wireless tethering. Should you need internet access on a computer for whatever reason- maybe you need to download a file and burn it to a disk, or upload some files that are on your computer, or your friend needs to get online for something.
4: 4G (someday you'll never consider a phone without it, at that time you'll know what you've been missing out on)
5: Use as a flash drive. Works on any computer or any stereo that has a USB port- which is pretty much any car stereo in any car I get in these days. Go to lunch with your coworker, you can connect your phone to his stereo and play the recording you made when he farted while giving a seminar or something (or just the good tunes you have because all he has is the crap his kids left in the car or whatever).
6: Cheaper (saving money is always good)
7: No worries about apps getting rejected. And this happens all the time- like the wireless tethering app, sling player (over 3G), and just about any app that uses a lot of data- I know Apple sometimes later approves them after initially rejecting them, but you get them right away on every other platform with no worries about it never getting approved. You could have Google Voice right now, for example.
8: Standardized and modular components. Things like a removable battery that you can replace with a different size/capacity if you want- or even carry an extra battery if you think it will run out on you, microsd cards that you can swap out and into your new phone when you replace it so you have all your data in a matter of seconds (you could, theoretically, have a video on a microsd card, pop that into your phone, connect your phone to a tv, and go over game videos on the team bus) USB and HDMI connections so regular connections on any stereo/tv/computer/charger will work with it with no special proprietary cables. It's pretty awesome being able to easily connect my phone to any tv and show whatever video I want, without a special cable needed. You could probably make all kinds of good use of this feature as a coach (especially when you combine it with an 8 megapixel camera that records video at 720p high def- halftime *** chewings could include video of the screw ups).
9: No need for proprietary software to transfer files to and from it. If I go to my dad's house and he has a video/picture/document/song/powerpoint presentation/whatever that he wants to give me, I can get it by connecting a USB cable and not worrying about him having iTunes or even him having the internet. And it works the other way too- if my dad tells me his computer isn't working properly I can have copies of whatever app needs to be reinstalled on my phone, back up all his data onto my phone, and get him up and running with nothing more than my phone and a USB cable.
10: Wireless sync. No need to ever even connect a cable to sync all your data. And no propriatery software required either.
11: No data caps. No need to worry about getting a huge bill or even getting data cut off for using too much.

I'll take "Things that don't matter to 99% of smartphone users out there" for $500, Alex. But more importantly, none of those is an issue for me and none of them are going to substantially improve my life to some euphoric level anyway.

Try again . . .

 

[bordelais7]

I'll take "Things that don't matter to 99% of smartphone users out there" for $500, Alex. But more importantly, none of those is an issue for me and none of them are going to substantially improve my life to some euphoric level anyway.

Try again . . .

So...what DOES matter, then? You want to know which phone will have the best Farmville app?

 

[Jason]

I admit. I'm an Apple Fanboy. Like Hearsky, I have an iPhone, iPad, and an iMac that I use everyday. The thing that keeps me on the iPhone is strangely -- iTunes. I even struggle with this decision every 30 days because I am PURPOSELY paying a $100 AT&T bill when I don't have to as my work will allow me to buy ANY phone I want on Verizon and pay the bill.

Salty states: "10: Wireless sync. No need to ever even connect a cable to sync all your data. And no propriatery software required either."

I want to know how the andriod operating system does this or, better yet, how I can keep the same flexibility I have today and even add wireless sync? Currently my iMac is watching my TiVo and when something I want records, it auto-transfers to my iMac on a media drive and adds the file to iTunes. I also subscribe to a dozen podcasts that auto-download when new "eipsodes" release. From time to time I'll watch a ripped movie that I've backed up from my collection. All of this uses the iTunes hub. When I'm done watching the item, it's marked as "watched" and on the next sync it removes itself. I even have an application now running on my iMac called Air Video that will stream anything from iTunes (or a folder) to my iPhone or iPad in case I didn't mark it as "unwatched" before I left home.

Does the android platform have a solution for this that, ideally, allows me to get all the information in the same manner from iTunes as I do today? I still have the iPad so I want the source system to remain iTunes. If that's not possible, how do I do all this outside iTunes with ease?

Trust me - I'd like to save $1200+ a year dropping my AT&T bill but the advantages of the software tied to an iPhone is too much at this point. It's not the phone as much as the convenience I have.

 

[SaltyDawg]

I'll take "Things that don't matter to 99% of smartphone users out there" for $500, Alex. But more importantly, none of those is an issue for me and none of them are going to substantially improve my life to some euphoric level anyway.

Try again . . .

So...what DOES matter, then? You want to know which phone will have the best Farmville app?

Exactly.

You tell me what you do with your phone, and then I'll tell you what jumps out at me that would be better on another phone.

You're crazy saying none of that stuff matters to 90% of smartphone users though.

Show me one iPhone user that wouldn't be happy if they suddenly lowered his bill, uncapped his data, sped his data up to 4G standards, got rid of the crappy app approval process, standardized all the connections, gave full Flash support, and added wireless sync that doesn't require iTunes or any other proprietary software.

By the way, there are millions of people jailbreaking their iPhones to get some of this, so it obviously matters. And Apple has already said they will look at adding wireless sync in the next update, so that obviously matters too.

Anyway, tell me what you do with your phone and that way I'll know what matters to you.

 

[SaltyDawg]

I admit. I'm an Apple Fanboy. Like Hearsky, I have an iPhone, iPad, and an iMac that I use everyday. The thing that keeps me on the iPhone is strangely -- iTunes. I even struggle with this decision every 30 days because I am PURPOSELY paying a $100 AT&T bill when I don't have to as my work will allow me to buy ANY phone I want on Verizon and pay the bill.

Salty states: "10: Wireless sync. No need to ever even connect a cable to sync all your data. And no propriatery software required either."

I want to know how the andriod operating system does this or, better yet, how I can keep the same flexibility I have today and even add wireless sync? Currently my iMac is watching my TiVo and when something I want records, it auto-transfers to my iMac on a media drive and adds the file to iTunes. I also subscribe to a dozen podcasts that auto-download when new "eipsodes" release. From time to time I'll watch a ripped movie that I've backed up from my collection. All of this uses the iTunes hub. When I'm done watching the item, it's marked as "watched" and on the next sync it removes itself. I even have an application now running on my iMac called Air Video that will stream anything from iTunes (or a folder) to my iPhone or iPad in case I didn't mark it as "unwatched" before I left home.

Does the android platform have a solution for this that, ideally, allows me to get all the information in the same manner from iTunes as I do today? I still have the iPad so I want the source system to remain iTunes. If that's not possible, how do I do all this outside iTunes with ease?

Trust me - I'd like to save $1200+ a year dropping my AT&T bill but the advantages of the software tied to an iPhone is too much at this point. It's not the phone as much as the convenience I have.

I don't use iTunes, so I am not an expert on syncing it to Android. But I know for sure it can be done. There are a ton of apps made specifically for syncing wirelessly to iTunes. I don't know which one is the best because I don't use any of them, but check this out:
https://www.appbrain.com/search?q=itunes+sync
Tons of apps for syncing to iTunes.

There are countless apps for podcasts too. I would not let that get in the way.

Just port your number to google voice (it's free) and then tell your job to get you whatever phone you want. You can play with it, and if you like it, have your google voice number forward to your work number. Then you don't lose your number, and you get the phone. If you decide to go back, you can port your number back to an iPhone and just keep your work phone (it's free anyway).

By the way- Droid X comes out in a couple weeks on Verizon, and the Droid 2 comes out in mid to late August...