Sven’s Glass House

Walked into Verizon to see if they knew if they’d be carrying the BlackBerry 9000 (aka the Bold). I was told they carry the Curve (8830). I told them that I knew AT&T was going to carry the Bold and wasn’t the best cell phone company out there. The salesman agreed, explaining that he and another of his coworkers had left AT&T for Verizon.

I wound up telling him about the battle for my soul being waged by the iPhone 3g, the Bold and the Nuvifone. His two cents were “the iPhone sucks.” I probably should’ve let him elaborate, but somehow we instead went down the road of what he’d pick. What he actually did pick, LG’s Dare. He let me play with his phone for a bit: touchscreen, fast UI, apparently a powerful camera (3.2 MPixel), a record setting video recording ability (at least for a phone), normal texing if held vertical, turn it sideways and you’ve got a proper qwerty keyboard (woot). The Verizon store itself had no waiting and friendly service, whereas the Sprint store was busy and the lines were long (I’d wanted to inquire if they knew if they were to carry the bold and maybe to receive the pitch on the Instinct).

So, I decided to look up the Dare and see how it stacks up. I saw a few warning flags:

“The Dare isn’t a smartphone” -Sascha Segan, pcmag.com
“The Dare has a mediocre Web browser, Teleca’s Obigo. The Obigo version on the Dare, version 7, is higher than I’ve seen before; but it’s clunky enough to be frustrating, and (at least on the Instinct and Voyager) is very slow to render pages. Opera, Nokia, and Apple’s browsers are all far superior” -Sascha Segan, pcmag.com

Not a smartphone? Mediocre web browser?
These called into question what it was that I was looking for in my next phone, the things that make me want one phone more than others.

My key features:

• Visual/non-linear vmail - My mother clutters my vmail box and I wind up not wanting to listen to five of her messages to get to that one from the unknown number, or for that friend I have plans with after work. I wind up not listening to messages at all, they back up more and before I know it I have 20 messages waiting for me.
• Web Browsing - I actually like using the internet on my phone. I hate the experience on my current phone. The internet looks strange, flash pages are no go, load times are slow, navigation is frustrating (holding down or clicking it rapidly and it often takes me a solid minute to navigate down to what I’m looking for). I’m an internet addict, I want navigability.
• SDK (software development kit) - This contributes to the longevity and adaptability of the phone. Developers can make new programs that run on the phone. A good, open, well-managed SDK can make the phone evolve over the life of the phone. One of the reasons the iPhone shines is because they have a very good SDK that they’ve opened up so people can make programs for it, then they send them to Apple who can approve of them and put them in the convenient App Store on iTunes. I’ve been told that BlackBerry has a great SDK that they make more open than Apple. Google’s Android OS (as will be used in the Nuvifone) is open all the way and it is very possible that programs will be able to create more fundamental changes in the OS, so in theory the Nuvifone will have the best SDK.
• QWERTY Keyboard - at least I think I want it. I’m tired of pressing 7 four times to get quite possibly the most common letter used in texting (s). I attend a lot of fights, g, h and i reside on 4. Press 3 three times, press 4 three times, wait until the cursor is ready, hit 4 once, wait until the cursor is ready, hit 4 twice, hit 8 once, hit 7 four times. Ten keypresses for a six letter word, where I have to pause twice. I do wonder if I’ll get to the point where I can type on the QWERTY with one thumb, while not looking, like I do with my current phone…
• Call quality - My current phone sucks at this. I want to hear and be heard, it’s a phone first and foremost. If it can hold signal better that would be a big plus. If the carrier had coverage of Brookside Blvd, my basement, that point on Sweeney right before Wornall, that would be nice.

The Dare has a qwerty and the conventional using the touchscreen, but I don’t know what it’ll be like with no tactile sensation, I won’t be able to feel the buttons, but I don’t really get to with my current phone and I do ok. The Dare apparently wiffs on the browser. I have no idea how the Dare fares for SDK. There is no mention in the review about the Dare having visual voice mail.

And the Instict?

“Signal reception for voice calls was marginally erratic” -Kent German, cnet.com
“The Instinct offers its own brand of visual voice mail and it bests the first incarnation of the iPhone by offering 3G (EV-DO Rev. A) network compatibility, integrated GPS, and work e-mail support, just to name a few.” -Kent German, cnet.com

No WiFi? A bit of a knock against it for my internet criteria, at least it has 3g. Erratic call quality? That is a huge knock against it. It is said to be very feature rich, it is said to excell at GPS (eh) and messaging (hm). It can do qwerty. I have no information about the SDK.

Reviews/Ratings

• Dare: 8.3/10 (editors), 8.3/10 (users) (CNET review)
• Instinct: 8.0/10 (editors), 7.6/10 (users) (CNET review)
• iPhone 3g: 8.3/10 (editors), 7.0 (users) (CNET review)
• BlackBerry Curve: 8.0/10 (editors), 8.2/10 (users) (CNET review; note, this is the last gen, Bold reviews not available yet)

Pricing

• iPhone pricetag: $199 (8gb), $299 (16gb) + $30/month (data) + $40-$200/month (450 minutes to 6000 minutes, but unlimited nights and weekends are included on plans of $60+/month)
• Dare pricetag: $199 + $40-$100/month (voice, 450 minutes to unlimited, unlimited in network, nights/weekends) + $2/mb (no normal data plans, eh?)
• Instinct pricetag: $129 + $40-$100/month (450 minutes to unlimited everything)

Instinct is looking to be the best $ choice, or if the Bold gets carried by Sprint. Sprint seems to be the leader in pricing for people that want data.

*just added 3:31 7/22/2008: Veronica Belmont has an iPhone 3G and has been having a bad go with it (link):

“I had to charge my phone three times a day when I was at E3.”
“Whenever I go to type a new text message or email, the keyboard takes forever to register that I’m trying to use it. Usually around 30 seconds or more…”
“I didn’t plug it in before I went to bed, and it was probably at a 75% charge when I last checked it. This morning? About 20%.”

…she does have hope that the next firmware update will help. *end update
my previous chapters of phone fight:
phone fight: looks (link)
phone fights: lead contender spec comparison (blog form, spreadsheet)

This entry was posted on Monday, July 21st, 2008 at 6:30 pm and is filed under gadgetry. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.