Commentary: An Open Dear John Letter to AT&T

I got a letter from AT&T today.  It read: "Dear Omari, You recently disconnected the qualified number above and we at AT&T want you back.  Here are some compelling reasons that we've designed to make it as easy as possible: [blah blah blah]"

So here is my response, an open letter to AT&T:

Dear AT&T,

As you may have noticed, I've left you for Sprint. My service has been cancelled, and my iPhone is up for sale on eBay. I've left you my early termination fee and some rollover minutes in the fridge.

Don't get me wrong, there were a lot of good times. We spent 10 mostly-wonderful years together. You were my first mobile provider, back when you were called Cingular. And you introduced me to smartphones by providing me with the iPhone. I thought we would last forever, or for at least a few more contracts.

But I've moved on. I'm an Android man now. And while my phone has issues and I may return to the iPhone someday, I think I am done with you for good, AT&T. You just haven't catered to my needs. Sure, you have fast 3G, but that's about it. Your coverage is terrible in LA and worse elsewhere; your prices aren't very low; your "4G" is just embarrassingly slow, especially uploads. Your Android phone selection is poor and your Android phones are bloated and locked down. You wouldn't even allow non-Market apps until a few months ago! And your ridiculous anti-tethering policy is not Net Neutral. I lived in a constant state of fear, worried that I might get charged for a tethering plan when I used my jailbroken iPhone as a wifi hotspot. It was my shameful secret. I had to tell my friends that my phone fell down some stairs and couldn't tether anymore.

And then I heard that you want to merge with T-Mobile and ruin a perfectly good mobile carrier. I remember the moment I read the news—I spent all day crying. Why would my mobile carrier want to create an carrier oligopoly and a GSM monopoly? It was all too much to bear.

Sprint knows how to make a man feel good. I've got real 4G now and a powerful Android phone that'll be rooted soon. I've got unlimited texting. And unlimited data (with no throttling!). I even have mobile to mobile to any mobile, not just to Sprint phones. But most importantly, I can make a phone call from wherever I want. In the parking lot at work, in the Samurai Sam's near Bristol Farms… Sprint and I have done it everywhere that you refused to go.

I wish you luck in your endeavors, though I hope that merger dies in a fire.


Omari

iPhone 4 Review, 1 Year Later

Just over a year ago, Apple released the iPhone 4 for AT&T.

Why review the phone now? A couple of reasons. 1) I just jumped ship to Android, so I need to review the iPhone before I sell it; 2) for some reason, no new iPhone was released this summer, so the iPhone 4 is still the newest iPhone; and 3) even a year later, the iPhone 4 is still one of the best smartphones available.

Let's break down the phone by comparing it to the newer Android phones that it is currently competing against.

Overall Experience
It's hard to compare the iPhone to non-Apple phones, mostly because I have such little experience with them.  But, having owned an Android phone for a week now, there are some features (and lack thereof that stand out).

The fact that Apple tightly controls the software and hardware of the iPhone from start to end has become clear to me.  This is good and bad.  The iPhone may lack in features and developers may hate Apple's draconian app store approval process, but the iPhone is a solid phone, inside and out.  The only "major issue" with the iPhone 4--hardware or software--is the signal attenuation issue, which is easily solved by a piece of tape or just holding the phone carefully.  Well, all the iPhones also suffer from a generally crappy signal, especially on AT&T's crappy network, but I suspect that is a general smartphone issue.  I wish someone would design a smartphone with an external antenna.

This is in contrast to Android phones which have features galore and are customizable as all get-out, but many seem to suffer from more severe and less fixable issues.  My new HTC EVO 3D seems to have an issue with crappy sound recording and low sound playback.  Others have reported a tinny sound during calls, which I have noticed, but not 100% of the time.  Android had an infrequent issue that would send text messages to the wrong recipients.  This was fixed in version 2.3 of the OS, but, of course, many Android phones have yet to receive this updated version of the OS.  The Nexus 4G has slow 4G issues.  Several Android phones (EVO 4G, Thunderbolt) have terrible battery life.

There are plenty of reasons for this, one being that Apple has the advantage of being able to focus all of its energy on just one phone.  But regardless of reason, the consistent, bug-free experience of using an iPhone is a noticeable advantage.

But enough about experience.  Let's get to specifics.

Design
At 9.3mm deep, the iPhone is still quite thin.  It's thinner than new Android phones like the EVO 3D and the Atrix.  It's got a glass back which makes it pretty and easy to clean, though is crackable if dropped.  The size is nice: it feels comfortable in your hand, although it does limit the screen size (see Screen section).

The main flaws of the design versus other phones are the lack of a physical camera button (like the EVO 3D has), proprietary port (an Apple cable is required instead of a mini HDMI or mini USB cable)  and the lack of a removable battery.  Apple will probably never shift on their unremovable battery and proprietary port, but hopefully the iPhone 5 will see a dedicated camera button.

The iPhone having one physical button on its face is a drawback.  It's less efficient than phones with multiple buttons.  How do you search for something in iOS? Swipe left until you get to the search panel.  In Android, just press the Search button.  To go backwards in an app (like going to a previous webpage) you have to press something on the screen.  Android has a dedicated Back button.  Settings for an app?  Use the Settings button in Android.  Take a picture?  For iOS it means pressing a little camera button on the screen, which is damned impossible if you want to take a picture of yourself with the good camera (the back camera).  The EVO 3D (and some other Android phones) have a dedicated camera button.  The only button omission on the EVO 3D and I think all other Android phones is a Vibrate/Silent Ring switch.

Cameras
The back 5MP camera with flash is quite good and is comparable to those found on new Android phones.  At this point (the 5 megapixels point, that is) the measure of a camera's quality will be more about its sensor size, since upgrades in the amount of pixels means increasingly less.  Since phones rarely list sensor information in their tech specs it's hard to compare.  What I can say is that the iPhone 4, the Atrix, and the EVO 3D all have 5MP back cameras with flash capable of taking 720p video.

The front facing camera is less competitive as it only has VGA resolution (640x480) instead of the now standard 1.3 MP.  But it does the job.

Screen
A lot of Android phones (EVO, Epic, Thunderbolt) have large 4.3" - 4.5" screens, and I feel those are better because you can more easily see what you're doing.  Big screens mean big phones though and not everyone wants a huge phone filling up their pocket.  The iPhone has a 3.5" screen, which feels small to me.

However, that small screen makes the resolution that much more impressive.  Somehow, Apple crammed a 960x640 pixel screen into 3.5 inches making for a fabolous 326 pixels-per-inch.  That's better than the qHD screens (960x540) found on the newest Android phones like the EVO 3D.

The one thing the iPhone 4's screen doesn't have is the brilliance and contrast of a Super AMOLED (let alone the newer Super AMOLED Plus) screen.  The SAMOLED tech found on many Samsung Android and Windows Phone 7 screens is truly a beauty to behold, with blacks so dark it's hard to tell where the screen ends and the phone's black plastic begins.  And forget trying to look at your iPhone in direct sunlight on a sunny day.  Unless you have the brightness turned all the way up, you might as well be looking at a blank screen.

Surprisingly, even on the EVO 3D's non-SAMOLED screen, I have found it to be brighter with a better contrast than the iPhone 4's screen.

Battery
While the iPhone 4's battery is smaller (1420 mAh) than some new Android phones (like the EVO 3D's 1730mAh), the iPhone simply uses its battery more efficiently.  When my iPhone was new, I could probably get three days' uses out of it with mild use and leaving 3G on.  I doubt my brand new EVO 3D could last a day even with 4G turned off.

I used to think that multitasking ate up the battery on Android phones, but, looking at the battery usage on a my EVO 3D and a friend's Samsung Captivate, powering the display takes a greater percentage of the battery life than all the other apps, services and wireless technologies put together.  This is probably why Samsung devices (what with their SAMOLED screens) get such great battery life.  I haven't done enough research on all Samsung phones, but the Galaxy S II (not out in the US yet) reportedly has better battery life than the iPhone 4.  I don't know of any other phones that best the iPhone 4 in battery life.

Speed
Speedwise, the iPhone's A4 chip is on par with any Android phone I've ever seen.  There is little lag on the iPhone 4 (though jailbreaking will slow you down).  Similarly, jumping around a fast Android phone like the EVO 3D (which uses a dual-core 1.2 GHz Qualcomm MSM8660) is like flying on a jet made of greased lightning.  However, I'd wager that new Android phones' hardware is faster than the iPhone 4 simply because they are also handling true multitasking and background animations without skipping a beat.

Data Speed
The iPhone doesn't have any sort of 4G antenna yet.  What this means is that while AT&T's 3G is fast (I could get near 2Mbps sometimes, some people in other areas get closer to 5Mbps) and Verizon's 3G is fast (but slower than AT&T's), it's slower to download movies, music and web pages than phones that use Sprint's 4G (WiMAX) and (sometimes) AT&T's 4G (HSPA+) and much slower than Verizon's 4G (LTE) and T-Mobile's 4G (HSPA+).  What's interesting is that AT&T's 4G is spotty.  The uploads are still slow and, at least when it first came out last February, the Motorola Atrix 4G had slower data downloads than the iPhone 4.  So the iPhone 4, even without 4G data, may still have the fastest Internet access out of all AT&T phones.

Apps
The iPhone has more apps.  I think.  I was looking up the numbers and found this article talking about how it doesn't really matter.  They're right.  Both have more third party applications than I could ever hope to download and check out, let alone actually use.

One argument commonly given by iFans is that Apple has more "quality" apps in their App Store.  However, fandroids are quick to point out that Android has more free apps in Android Market (and various other Android app stores).   My personal opinion is that good, quality Apps are easier to find in Apple's App Store because of good organization and Apple's walled garden keeping a lot of crap apps out; but Android has more Apps that provide good functionality (video chat, widgets, synching options, etc.) because of the openness of the platform.

OS
UI-wise, iOS is more intuitive.  Perhaps it's because I've been using it for over 2 years, but I don't think so.  I have long believed that Apple has the world's best GUI designers working for them.  The simplicity and restrictions make things easier.  Where are all the apps in iOS? Press the home button.  They're right there.  What about Android? They're in the list of Applications, which requires you to press the Home button and then the Apps button.  Some are also on your home screen, perhaps as an icon, perhaps as a widget.  If it's a setting, you can set up a shortcut.  But not all settings can have shortcuts.  Notifications? In iOS, it's that big message box covering your screen (until iOS 5 comes out).  Notifications are annoying, but very easy to see what's going on.

But functionality-wise, the iPhone 4 is still behind Android, and probably WebOS too.  iOS lacks real multitasking, wireless synching, a halfway decent notification system and Adobe Flash.  And, sweet mother of Vishnu, I hate that only some text messages have timestamps.  A couple of these features will come with iOS 5 (to be released this fall); but right now, if you are a power user and want to get the most of your phone, the iPhone is not for you.  Not only are these functions not included in the OS, but, unlike Android Market, you won't find these apps in the Apple App Store either.  Apple doesn't like to approve apps that mess with the core functionality of the phone, which is why they rejected a WiFi Sync app a year ago and then decided to implement it in iOS 5.

Ecosystem
I'd say the main problem with buying an iPhone versus any other phone is that you are tied into the Apple ecosystem.  You have to activate and sync your phone using iTunes (the buggiest and biggest memory hog on my computer), you have to use expensive proprietary Apple cables and chargers (though you can find third parties cables for some of them), and you can only wirelessly stream video to your TV via Apple TV.  Wired streaming requires special Apple cables.  If you're a developer (and I'd like to be one, someday), writing an app for iOS means you have to write in Objective C , Apple's terrible programming language, and you have to do it on a Mac.  And if Apple doesn't accept your app, your only option is to try selling your app through Cydia, which only jailbroken iPhones have access to.

By contrast, Android phones aren't tied to anything.  You can drop music files on your phone like an external hard drive.  If you want to play video on your TV, most Android phones have HDMI out, or DLNA for wireless streaming.  To charge your phone, you use a micro USB cable, which is compatible with not just Android phones and also WebOS phones and Blackberry phones, too.  If you're a developer (someday...), writing an app for Android means using Java, one of the most popular programming languages and a personal favorite of mine.  And that app should also work on the Blackberry Playbook, which promises support for Android apps.

Conclusion
Hardware-wise, the iPhone 4 is behind the newest Android phones, but is still competitive.  It has a great battery, still undefeated screen resolution, and dual cameras.  Really, the only major drawbacks compared to other phones, hardware-wise, are the lack of a 4G antenna, (which may not be that much of an improvement on AT&T, but would make a huge difference on Verizon) and the external antenna problem.  Software-wise, Android has left iOS in the dust in terms of functionality and even the upcoming iOS 5 update won't make the iPhone as functional and customizable as any new Android phone.  The only thing the iPhone has going for it, software-wise, is the excellently designed UI and the Apple App Store.

So the iPhone 4 is competitive, but compared to the amazing Android phones out now, it seems a bit dated.  For every excellently-designed feature of the UI and solid hardware feature, there's a little feature that it's lacking.  If Android was perfect, the iPhone 4 would get a much lower score, but as a useable, enjoyable phone that is perfect for some niche groups, it gets a 7.

Note: Working on another tech-related project, so this blog is still on hiatus until that is done.