mtkoren

Apple's iPhone vs. RIM's BlackBerry: Who Wins on Comparison?

I live in the Raleigh Durham area and have been on AT&T for about 2 1/2 years (since getting the iPhone) and prior to that on Verizon for about 4 years with 3 different phones.

I dare say that since I switched to AT&T the number of dropped calls has gone DOWN substantially! The travel corridor I used with 4-6 call backs can now be done with 1-2 call backs. Having said that there are areas where Verizon reaches that AT&T does not and that is always aggravating.

The carrier icing on the cake is AT&T's rollover minutes, which has saved me money and aggravation, as I no longer need to monitor if I am about to pay a colossal penalty for running over my monthly allotment!

Finally, I've noticed that the connections with my iPhone are cleaner, more like a land line, than any phone I've ever had, though I've never tried the Blackberries. I absolutely love conferencing on the iPhone - it is a joy, a real get-to! And I can fly along typing on the virtual keyboard - I really don't like those small buttons. I agree though about the whimpy speakerphone sound quality. I don't agree that much about the battery life. Sometimes I think I'm getting more life out of the iPhone than my dumb regular phones used to give me, and I use the iPhone for far more than phone use. But yeah - if you do heavy data, such as mapping with frequent updates, games, Skype and so on, some of these apps can drain the battery fast! (Especially Skype!)

What Are Those Bars on My iPhone?

When I got my iPhone just over 2 years ago, commuting every day from Chapel Hill to Durham (NC), I noticed in leaving Verizon and nervously starting to use AT&T that suddenly all the dropped calls (usually about 5) between home and work were now almost OK! Imagine that! And that is with Edge. You get to know every hole along the way and I was down from 5 to 1. So I don't know about other areas but this was an improvement. Now on the other hand, when visiting family in the hills outside Woodstock NY, Verizon has better coverage for sure, based on being in the car with other people.

AT&T: The (Apple) Brand Destroyer

Yeah I've had service issues where AT&T dropped where Verizon didn't. But then again I've found, whether due to the iPhone or AT&T - I don't know which - I have far fewer drops going between locations in Durham and Chapel Hill with AT&T.

And like another, my experience of customer service with AT&T has in the past two years been MUCH better with AT&T than it wad with Verizon over the previous 5 years in this same area.

So on balance I'm not convinced AT&T is a terrible company. Though I must say that the OLD AT&T I think really was bad and I hated dealing with them. (You remember? That long distance carrier that was impossible to contact or reason with?) Could it be that people are tramatized by old memories and unable to shed them?

Finally, I wonder if Verizon had a deal with apple two years ago if they would have been prepared for the same rapidly growing data demands on their system that AT&T has had to face? Of course think about it. Isn't Verizon the company that cripples Bluetooth on cellphones? And demands control over content delivery? And doesn't do roll over minutes? Didn't Consumer Reports once show that CDMA network phone batteries seem to have about half-to-two thirds the battery life as GSM network phones?

iPhone Stock App Review

The built in stocks iPhone app, at least in the new version 3.0 software, allows news headlines as well as all the main daily stats directly without going first to yahoo. Just scroll the bottom section left or right.

Apple Is Worth More than Steve Jobs

Monster?

Apple's iTunes: Rapid Sales Acceleration

I agree with Oh Blah Dee Blah Dah even before seeing that comment. My 1st impression of the chart was - oh what a mess - is it worth the effort that the writer of the article hadn't succeeded in to try to make sense of it? It really makes it difficult to discern any trends. I suggest an update with another chart.