As I was scrolling through my RSS feeds during a "break"* today, I came across this post by Paul Thurrott on his Supersite for Windows Blog about the iPhone. I think Paul raises some good points in his post. I have an iPod Touch which I find to be a great iPod with Internet capabilities. I've never used an iPhone for much, but my last 3 phones have been Windows Mobile. I had an iPaq 6945 for about a year, a BlackJack II for three weeks, and an Samsumg Epix for the last three weeks. I'm finding, as Paul did, that the "smart" parts of the phone work fairly well, but the "phone" part of the phone doesn't work that great at all and I'm finding this not to be isolated to any particular model. The reception is sub-par, the connections aren't that great, it's not always easy to bring up the phone application, sometimes calls won't disconnect, sometimes the phone app locks up while trying to answer a call and the call goes to voice mail. My wife reports that she has to routinely pull the battery from her BlackJack II to end a call. If I told you that, you could assume that I'm just running too much on my phone, but my wife uses it for little more than phone calls and text messaging. Last night while trying to get my Epix to disconnect a call, it somehow decided to dial 911 on me. I freaked when I heard 911 on the other end, and I profusely apologized for my phone somehow accidentally dialing. I have no idea if that was a glitch or something that I did, and I have no intention of attempting to reproduce the problem.
Prior to the iPaq 6945, my to previous phones were SonyEricsson. One was a Z500a and the other a z525. Both were wonderful phones, but that was about it. I really enjoy having a "Smartphone", but at times I wish the phone part worked better. So what are those of us who like Smartphones to do? It seems that we can either go back to using a decent cell phone, or we can live with a crappy phone while we enjoy mobile email, web surfing, and tethering capabilities. My Epix, when tethered to my laptop, almost feels like I'm at home on my cable modem. I guess for the few phone calls I get, I can live with that until those of us who love these devices decide we're fed up and we expect the manufacturers to produce devices that work better on the phone ends.
I agree with Paul, a "fix windows mobile now dot com" site would be fruitless. At least we can copy and paste, and our MMS messages work the same as our SMS. Score 1 for Window Mobile. I guess until we get better phones in our smartphones, we're reduced to whining on our blogs about them.
*Break- being a veteran, I decided to take Veteran's Day off. I've been a veteran for 10 years, and have not yet had this day off. I ended up taking a vacation day as I have yet to work for a company that considers Veteran's Day as a paid holiday. My wife interpreted that as being a great day to run errands, so I'm eager to get back to work tomorrow where the pace is slower and I can relax a bit. My day of "vacation" has left me exhausted.
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