After spending approximately 4 years kicking my heels on the matter, I finally decided to buy a modern telephone.
A few things caused me to hold out that long:
1. A curmudgeonly attitude towards new technology
2. The desire for a physical keyboard, or something more convenient than the stock android keyboard.
3. My sister constantly stealing my free upgrade.
During those four years, I was on a family plan with AT&T. I can't really comment too much on them; the feature phone I got from them was adequate (5 years old, paint's peeling off but the phone still runs) and coverage was adequate.
In doing the switch, though, I went with T-Mobile, primarily because it gives you a discount on your monthly fee of about $20/month if you buy a phone without contract. Over two years it ends up being cheaper.
A little bit of market research, I bought myself a T-Mobile G2x, aka the LG P999. And here's what I think so far:
Part 1: The Phone
1. From a build quality point of view, I can't really fault it.
2. I'm a bit ambivalent on the capacitive buttons. I get that it's impossible to get gunk stuck under buttons with this sort of setup, but on the minus side the vibration that lets you know a button press has occurred can't be good for battery life.
Note that this little vibration is a nice unintentional feature with this sort of button: if you press the button but no vibration occurs when it should, it's a good indicator that the system might have hung. Not that it happens often with this phone.
3. Battery life with the Tegra 2 dual core setup is..., well, I can't really compare it to other smartphones, but I suppose it is adequate. Fully charged in the morning + heavy use in the daytime means it will be about to run out at the end of the day. Heavy usage here means significant usage of the GPS unit and the 4G and wifi radios.
Just using it as a phone means it lasts significantly longer.
4. No LED for notifications. This is basically unforgivable for this sort of phone, at this sort of price ($500 without contract).
5. GPS unit seems to take a while to get a read depending on where you are. I've heard there's a software update coming out mid summer to fix it according to a T-Mobile store person, but my hopes aren't high.
Overall, aside from the missing LED and relatively slow seeming GPS lock, I can't really think of much that's bad to say about the phone.
Part 2: Android
Cell phone interfaces seem to be terrible in general due to the limitations on ease of input with this sort of platform, but I get that Android and iOS try to do the best they can. Despite that, I'm still often wishing things were as convenient as my desktop and laptop systems (running Linux and Windows 7). So with that in mind:
1. The unlock screen. There's a few things to note here.
A. When you set up a pattern lock for the phone (input the correct pattern to unlock), then you get a small clock saying the time. When there is no pattern (slide right to unlock) you get a much larger, nicer, easier to read clock. It's not a huge deal, but it would be nicer if the clock was easier to read when a pattern lock was set.
B. The lock screen is supposed to be a security measure. That means it's supposed to keep other users from using your phone, which it does - but it is also supposed to prevent another person from discovering what you were looking at on your phone when you reactivate the screen from power saving mode. This it DOES NOT DO. There are several occasions I've encountered when waking the phone up that it briefly flashes the screen that the lock screen should be covering, before painting the lock screen, which is unacceptable.
2. The Home Screen. I'd prefer a more configurable home screen - specifically, set up the number and spatial relationship of the panels. Something like Linux + Compiz Fusion's workspace switcher.
3. The Camera. There's no physical button to take a picture. Also, it takes a significant amount of time to unlock, enter the camera app, and take a picture. By which point, it's likely the moment you wanted to capture is gone. So a faster acting camera would be good.
4. The News Application. I don't see an obvious way to choose news sources, which would be nice.
5. The Email application. I don't see a search feature, which would be nice. It's a very barebones email application.
6. Maps. Oftentimes maps switches from a top-down view to a weird perspective view after getting a GPS lock. I'm not sure how to switch it back, which is annoying. Also, I get that this is likely due to licensing agreements on map data, but I'd like some way to control map caching so I don't need a data connection to use Maps.
7. Contacts. I have people I know showing up in the favorites tab, but not in the contacts tab. Sometimes I'm getting duplicates, where they show up in both but with different profile photos. I'm not entirely sure why.
Also, being able to merge two contacts together would be a great feature.
8. Calculator. I think that including a fully featured graphic/scientific calculator would be a great F-U to vendors that still charge big money for relatively weak graphing calculators that haven't changed in a decade. Come to think of it, there's probably an app on Android market that does this. If not, there should be.
Those specific points don't tell the whole story though. I keep thinking of how much nicer my other computers are when performing the following tasks:
1. Open image in a new tab in Firefox. Easy to do on a real computer. Haven't figured out a quick and easy way on Firefox mobile yet.
2. Share a link or image over IM. On the desktop, right click on the image or link, copy shortcut, and paste into IM client. On firefox mobile though, there's no easy way to just get the link for an image that you wish to share.
3. Multitasking without Android deciding, in its infinite wisdom, that it should close that task on my behalf. I guess what I'm really saying is that I want more direct control on application state, like a task manager of sorts.
Overall though, Android's not completely terrible. It could be way better, but it's not completely terrible. Just terrible enough for me to prefer my real computers for the most part.
Part 3: T-Mobile
T-Mobile's customer service is nice enough, in the interactions I've had with them. I appreciate the discount that I get by buying my phone outright (check out the EvenMore+ plan with no contract for more details). 4G speeds usually are around 4-5 Mbps with decent coverage, 6-8 Mbps with a really good signal, and as bad as 0.5 Mbps when 4G is just hanging on by a thread. 2G is dismal, no surprises there. I will say that AT&T's coverage zones were larger though; I get AT&T 3G service in areas where T-Mobile falls back to 2G, and in some cases even where there's no T-Mobile coverage at all.
Overall, though, I'd say I'm happy with my purchase on all three fronts. While there's several obvious areas for improvement, it was a decent start into the world of wasting time and being generally obnoxious in public with a super pricey telephone.
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