Whither The Fool?

I was deeply unhappy with the LG CU500 I was using at the time the Apple iPhone was announced. Far too many “flip-phone” devices seem to be targeted at the Perpetual Adolescent bracket, continually badgering you to buy things, add “gotta have it” features like (I kid you not) song identification services, etc., and I found out too late that the CU500 didn’t even support IMAP or POP email.

The biggest thing it had going for it was the 3G Network capability and (relatively) easy Bluetooth tethering to my laptop computer.

I decided that I needed something a bit more “adult” to meet my wireless communications needs, so when the iPhone was announced, I got just as woozy about it as a lot of folks. First off, I had recently purchased - and then had stolen - the newest and biggest “Generation 5.5″ iPod, the big 80GB model, and I admit that I finally got the reason why the iPod is still, five-plus years after virtually creating the MP3 player market, the sine qua non in that market. After my iPod was snatched, I experienced intense pangs of withdrawal (though I have not replaced it even to this day). I thought that, even at the breathtaking $500 price point, having an iPod as part of my phone would be a joyous thing. I liked almost everything else the Apple hype-machine had to say about the device, in fact.

But the one thing that stopped me was the fact that, for reasons unknown, Apple did not choose to support 3G. Having experienced the dubious benefits of Cingular’s “Edge Network” (so named, I think, because the teeth-grindingly slow throughput definitely puts you on “edge”), and having to depend so much on my phone as an internet gateway for my mobile office, I finally and reluctantly decided to pass.

Some months later, the verdict of the tech punditry is in. An article by Debra Littlejohn Shinder published last week on one of Tech Republic’s blogs summarizes it nicely:

#1: It costs too much
#2: It doesn’t fully support [Microsoft] Exchange
#3: User-unfriendly battery
#4: Where’s the keyboard?
#5: No third-party applications
#6: Stuck with AT&T
#7: The bleedingly slow EDGE
#8: Smile! You’re on iPhone camera
#9: iTunes required to sync
#10: The dead zone [referring to problems with the display]

Given these reasons (and others that I’m sure we could find with a little searching), I’m glad I didn’t go for iPhone 1.0.

Instead, I now have a Samsung Blackjack - which I don’t like very much at all. Is there anything more lame than Windows Mobile? After spending several years with the PalmOS, most recently with the Palm Treo (which also does not currently support 3G, alas), I find myself more than a little puzzled that Microsoft has ever been able to make headway against Palm. I’m not sure where the Blackjack leaves off and Windows Mobile begins in terms of “suckage,” but I am left with (to my mind) a crippled device that doesn’t do half of what I would like it to do. I haven’t managed to get it to sync to my Windows XP laptop, either through Bluetooth or via USB, and thus cannot tweak anything about it to suit me. There’s supposed to be an upgrade to the latest version of Windows Mobile available, but Cingular/AT&T refers you to Samsung who refers you to AT&T…

So I’m stuck with what I have now, perhaps until iPhone 2.0 comes along. I hope.

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