My New Friend

Now that Scott has left his job, we had to go out and get phones like normal people. Scott used to work for T-Mobile, so he had several employee lines, and paid next to nothing for 'em. This was especially nice for my stepdaughter, I think. I bet not many of her friends had a Sidekick in junior high, and never once had to worry about going over minutes or texts or anything. Frankly, I was a little worried about what our cell phone bill was about to entail, but as it turns out, I was pleasantly surprised.

I knew right off that we would need unlimited texting. I'm not sure how, but Cass sends over 1500 texts steadily each month, and receives about the same. That's a lot. Or maybe it's not. I don't really hang out with any high school chicks, so maybe it's par for the course. Anyway, that was a priority- texting. Luckily, (I assume because of all the texts) she uses about the same amount of minutes as Scott and I each do. With these things in mind, I started shopping around a bit.

I won't lie. I chose our new carrier for one reason, and here it is:

Yup. The iPhone. I had been nudging Scott for a Google phone, but in my heart I always really wanted the iPhone. And I'm so glad fate landed us in this situation, because it really is freaking awesome. All three of us got one, each with our own snazzy case. I went with orange. I'm thinking about naming mine The Viceroy.

Three iPhones on a plan with unlimited text and 700 minutes will run you about $200/month. Plus AT&T has those great rollover minutes, so if there is some sort of crisis, we hopefully won't have to worry about some extra phone usage. But the ability to not only check email, but tweet, blog, check any website, get directions, and always having my iPod on me? Priceless.

My Blackberry Pearl looks like a worthless POS next to this sweet thing. My HTML emails are readable, the camera is better, no more phone delay, internet is nearly flawless, and it's way faster. Hooray for 3G! And I hate to break it to T-Mobile, but AT&T is killing them with better 3G coverage.

So far I've only found two things I don't like about it.

1)It's not compatible with the iPod-through-the-car-radio cord we have. Scott's iPod touch worked with it, but not the iPhone. Which also means not having a car charger. So we have to get a new one of those, or a new car stereo with a MP3 jack, or something.
2)Email isn't automatically updated. To see if I have new email, I have to physically go in and look.

Neither of these is a big deal by any means. And my god, the applications! There are more than you could possibly go through in a lifetime. So far I've only gotten a few freebies, but I see more in my future.

Now if I could just put it down long enough to get some knitting done...