Mobile Dad

Five years ago, I left Colorado Springs for greener pastures and warmer weather down here in Austin, Texas.  The reasons to leave were it was too cold, the tech industry there kind of suck and the infrastructure for technology was kind of weak.  But one thing for sure, you cannot beat the views that town can produce.

Well now that I am situated here in Austin and built a home, I figure I would have numero uno access to top tech.  You cannot beat the liveliness of Austin and the vigor of the start-ups that are all around me.  One thing that did not change was the number of drop calls and slowness of AT&T’s network.  I figured with all the tech companies around Austin, AT&T would rock.  Sadly my wife and I have mapped out all the locations where our iPhones would drop calls, I should make an app for that.

Now MobileCrunch is reporting that AT&T is upgrading Colorado Springs market with a dedicated 850 Mhz 3G network.  OK, ha ha, very funny, wait till I leave before you decide to clean up your act.  Thanks AT&T for allowing my friends in CS to mock me.  But I sure do not miss the cold.

[MobileCrunch]

Yeah I know, this all happened yesterday. So why report it today? Well that is the level of excitement the iPhone 3GS generated, for me atleast.  I guess I got wrapped up with all the cool hype about a matte backing, or video conferencing, or Steve Jobs pulling the new phone out after his famous, “One more thing.”  No, instead we got the iPhone 3GS. An incremental upgrade to the 3G. Yeah, the tone is that of disappointment.  The 3GS does have an auto-focus 3mpix camera that can do video, a compass and voice control (oh that last one can SOO be turned on for current 3G iphones) but that is it really.  The iPhone 3.0 software would give all iPhone users cut/paste, landscape keyboards across all apps and voice memos.  We also get MMS but only when AT&T is ready to roll that out (meaning it will not be available at launch).  Tethering is also an option, not from AT&T, starting to see a pattern?  PLUS if I did want to upgrade, I have to pay hundreds more per phone and sign up for another two year contract.  Hmm, let’s see the Palm Pre had a killer launch and is a true contender to the iPhone, Apple looked a little weak with their incremental upgrade and AT&T is crippling iPhone users even more by locking out current users from the discounted rate.  With money being as tight as it is now, I am looking for something that says I should buy now from Apple or AT&T. I’m not seeing it.

I love my iPhone but I think I am going to wait it out for the next iteration of the iPhone and hopefully on Verizon’s network.  With the shaky ground AT&T’s exclusive deal with Apple and the desire to gouge it’s current user base with pricing and delayed launching of features, there is no real incentives to lock yourself in with AT&T beyond the initial contract.

I loved my G1 phone.  I loved where Google’s Android platform was heading and was ever so excited about the ‘cupcake’ update.  So obviously it was a pained decision made ever so easy due to the service.  I knew T-Mobile’s network was small but the extent was glaring where my wife worked.  Where Verizon provided a strong signal, she got nothing from T-Mobile.  It seemed pointless to spend good money on data services that cannot be used or even worse have a cell phone that cannot perform the most basic of functions, making/receiving calls. continue reading…