The Verizon iPhone

Posted: January 17, 2011 | | Categories: Mobile

I've said this for a long time now and I'm speaking for myself, NOT my employer: The best thing that can happen to AT&T is for Verizon to get the iPhone. As I've written here before, Apple doesn't care about the network, they just don't. So, Verizon getting the iPhone is going to really show how good AT&T's network really is.

What's interesting is the "Verizon Deal May Expose iPhone Flaws" article in the New york Times. Like the wired article of last summer, it's a good, even, balanced & impartial look at the iPhone. Some parts of the article that struck me as interesting (and true):

Yet for all that it offers, the iPhone has always been plagued by serious drawbacks. The “phone” part of the iPhone has never worked very well, dropping calls with annoying regularity. Even when the phone works, the sound quality is often substandard. You would think in an age when fewer people are using landlines this would matter. Apparently not.

If I'm on the phone with someone and the call drops, when they call back I always ask them "you're on an iPhone, right?" I don't get dropped calls on my BlackBerry, so if two phones are on the same network and the calls drop more frequently for the one phone vs. the other, which is it? The phone or the network?  It's the phone.

Meanwhile, the iPhone's lack of a raised keyboard makes it next to impossible to do serious e-mailing. And users have to worry constantly about battery life; if they're not judicious, the iPhone's battery can be drained by noon.

Yeah, how good is a phone if the battery won't last past noon?

“People so love their devices from Apple that they are willing to put up with the stupidities,” said Larry Keeley, president of the innovation and design firm Doblin. “For many users,” he added, “especially the ones Apple loves the most, the fact that the battery gets balky is how you convince yourself to get a new one.”

My oldest son, Amato, who is on my Verizon Wireless plan, told me recently that even though he was perfectly happy with his Android phone, if given the chance to switch to an iPhone, he would probably do it. “I can't even say why,” he said. “I don't even know if there is any real rationale behind that desire.”

True, very true - People are going to buy one no matter how good it is (or isn't).

Why not support Verizon's 4g network? That one makes no sense - right after the launch of LTE for Verizon (although Verizon's implementation of LTE isn't 4g, not yet).  Check out the quote:

At the Verizon Wireless-iPhone extravaganza on Tuesday — in which the two companies announced that the iPhone 4 would run on Verizon Wireless's 3G network — Apple's chief operating officer, Timothy D. Cook, was asked why Apple wasn't going with the carrier's faster, newer 4G LTE network. Mr. Cook replied that doing so required “design compromises” that Apple was unwilling to make.

They never make design compromises at Apple. They make consumer compromises. Yet consumers have always been willing to overlook those compromises so they can claim they own some of the coolest products on the planet.

I'm sticking with my BlackBerry, thank you. I use my iPhone for some apps (like the Sonos app) but for day to day business, nothing beats a BlackBerry.

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Header image: Photo by Eirik Solheim on Unsplash.