On Friday, I was finally able to get my personal phone number back from Hewlett-Packard. I got the number way back in the day when I lived in San Francisco and I’m proud of my 415 area code, not to mention the hell I would go through if I decided to change the number. When I first started at Mercury Interactive (the company acquired by HP) I moved my number under the corporate account to make billing easy. Well, now I suffer from “Oh crap, HP IT is terrible!” and was afraid it would take me months to get my number back. Plus, I’m tired of my wicked cool Motorola Razr (but it must be cool since they spell like Web 2.0 company). HP swapped out my awesome Blackberry for a Razr because I’m sure I was being too productive. At the time, I thought it would be a good thing. Finally, unconnected! Now, crap, I’m unconnected! You should see me try to type an email on a normal cellular keypad.
Unfortunately, HP has a terrible line of mobile phones despite their amazing reputation with hardware. Yes, HP has mobile phones. You can find them under “Handhelds and Calculators” on the website. Ok, that’s problem number one. Forget about mobile and media coming together, HP is waiting for mobile and graphing calculators to finally come together.
Ok, now that I have my number back, what phone do I get? The following phones are in the running:
My basic requirements are the following:
- At&t Phone (I like their coverage)
- Qwerty keyboard
- Email support (Gmail and imap is fine)
- Web Access
I can’t believe that I’m considering the iPhone but it seems to be an amazing device. Is it a contender or a pretender? Here are my pro’s:
- No $50 data plan fee that Blackberry devices require (only$20 bucks)
- Awesome user interface
- Awesome web browser
- Google Maps integration
Here are my cons:
- High Flipping Cost for yet another Apple device
- Fat fingers will hate the keypad
- 3rd party applications still not officially supported
- No 3G
- It’s overrated
- People laughing at me for buying an iPhone
- Current iPhone becomes a “classic” in two months
- Price drop in two months
The question is … is the iPhone for real? Now that the early adopters have already stood in line in their “Apple Chicks are Hot” t-shirts, will the regular phone user care? Will the phone become as pervasive as the iPod for MP3 players? I guess time will only tell and I’ll need to bite the bullet and make a decision.
Please help me out. If you have phone suggestions or have an opinion please let me know.
Memory Leak 