iPhone your phone

So with this week's announcement of the iPhone coming to Verizon, you might expect it is time to swap over to Verizon from AT&T. Or you may be an existing Verizon customer and you have been chomping at the bit (as I did for a long time) to have an iPhone on Verizon. Halt! Stop right there.

As with any conversion, there are sacrifices. There are gains, but there are also sacrifices.

Gains:

1. Verizon network -- For most people this is all that matters. Verizon's coverage, at least in my area, is second to none. In fact many have put up with Verizon's monopolistic practices in areas where they were basically the only game in town for that reason. We put up with phones that we could load our own ring tones on. Limitations as to what web based things you could run, etc. I could go on but with the Droid phones and Verizon's initial efforts with them, they allowed a level of freedom they hadn't previously. Note: The downside to this is Verizon found out we were willing to pay more for a perceived more.

2. Hot Spot capability -- Verizon is shipping the phones with hot spot capability like they did the Droid 2 and Droid X phones. Yes, it costs extra but it is a nice feature. Note: The downside to this is Verizon found out we were willing to pay more for a perceived more. This seems to be an iOS feature and not a Verizon feature as AT&T may add this to their iPhones as well.

3. Antenna Gate is over... -- This is not proven yet. Based on initial testing by other organizations, it appears at least initially Verizon's version of the iPhone 4 phone has an antenna fix for the "grip of death"

Losses:

1. Data and voice at the same time -- You may or may not know, but on AT&T you can surf the web and make a phone call at the same time. With Verizon's first iPhone, you will not be able to do this. Why? Different technologies. AT&T uses GSM while Verizon uses CDMA. CDMA does not offer this capability. Now rumors of a specialized CDMA chip or the iPhone coming out initial with LTE (Verizon's new 4G data network) didn't happen.

2. Facetime -- Facetime will only work over WiFi. So you can't use your cellular network to get to another iPhone using Facetime. 

Draw:

1. iPhone 5 -- There will be a new iPhone 5 announced in June. Why? Apple always announces new products in June and September. Rumors are swirling that the iPhone 5 will come out in June and it will be 4G ready. Both for AT&T's network and for Verizon's network. Note: The downside to this is 4G is going to be in limited areas for a while. It will take Verizon and AT&T a while to get their respective versions of 4G to get out and about.

Conclusion:

Wait! I know, I know, your technology wanderlust is calling out to you and you want so bad. But you can have your cake and eat it too if you hold out for the iPhone 5. Besides, most of us are waiting on our contracts to be up so we can get a new phone anyway.

Other thoughts:

You could do just fine with a Droid 2 or Droid X. Granted the comparison of iPhone 4 and Droid 2 deserves its own entry.

Impatient much?

Okay. I couldn't wait. I had to have it now. So I read through many of the hack sites about the Droid and downloaded the update to my SD card and booted it using the x key and the power button. Then it came up in recovery mode and I told it to update using the update.zip file. And off to the races we went. This took about 10 minutes total.

So early impressions...

I like. First thing I noticed is it takes longer to boot, but once it is running, it is hesitant yet faster. It is as if the screen is thinking for a moment and then poof, here is what you wanted. It seems responsive.

Text Messaging: Now it pulls pictures from Facebook and the Google Talk to place pictures beside names in text messages. Also a slight color bar difference makes it easier to follow text messaging threads.

Screens: Now it has five screens instead of three. While it has taken me some time to get used to using screens and being willing to clutter up my screens with app icons, they work very well. Plus, now there are small little screen buttons that allow you to swap back and forth through the screens though you can also swap screens using a finger swipe. I have yet to use widgets as they eat memory and annoy me more than they should. Widgets and animated wall paper use up the battery and I prefer the battery to last longer.

Camera: While I haven't taken any pictures I did visit the camera feature to find it has a lot more options for flash and focus. Plus it has settings for auto, incandescent, daylight, florescent, and cloudy. In video mode you can finally use flash while recording plus the day settings are available there as well.

New home button and launch pad. Now there is a launch pad for phone, apps, and browsing that is available on every screen. This is very handy. And as you go to different programs, the home button is available a lot more often. This is handy.

Gmail is a bit more streamlined.

That is it for today. More on the phone tomorrow.