wiPhone 2.0

I didn’t get a non-contractual At&t subscription out of fear of breaking down in the middle of nowhere, or that some anonymous emergency would require I call the police. In my experience, when you really need to call someone, there isn’t reception or time anyway. I got the one month subscription because I feared being ‘internetless’ for the month-long roadtrip on which I was about to embark. Maybe fear isn’t the right word: we’ve all been without Internet, since most of us grew up without it. Maybe ‘dread’ is more appropriate. I dreaded the suckiness of knowing a certain convenience existed yet being without it. Okay, dread isn’t quite right either. I preferred having Internet.

I stormed into Lloyd Center (the biggest mall in Oregon), bee-lined to the At&t store, waited for the first available service personnel and stated my desire. I wanted the minimum number of minutes, the maximum amount of data, no text, no frills. Just that. And I had my own phone (wiPhone 1.0 –iPhone 3gs). I didn’t want to start a contract, I just wanted one month of coverage for the roadtrip.

My prior research had concluded

450 minutes - $39.99/month

2 gigs - $25/month

$64.00+tax/month

The rep’s explication began with the fact that there is no ‘unlimited data’ but rather 2 gigs (now 5 gigs), which is enough for most people. Whatever. I was prepared to pay the price. But then he mentioned an activation charge of $35. Suddenly, Internet didn’t sound so necessary. He wanted me to pay 50% more just to get started? I needed some time to think it over.

I walked out of the store and pondered the question. I considered At&t’s calculation: once someone had paid the activation fee, they’d be less likely to leave after only one month. One would have to spend more to pay down the activation fee ratio to service cost. I thought this was a cheap shot. In fact, I was in the worst situation because I had paid full price for the phone, with no discounts in relation to a two-year contract, with the sole intention of not paying a dime to these suckers.

I stopped at an At&t booth in the mall and asked the rep if a 3gs jailbreak and unlock had been released in the last week since I’d last checked. He had no idea. I was in foreign territory. But then I told him what I was trying to do and he very non-chalently said, “We can waive the activation fee.” Really?

The clincher in this situation seemed to be that this was not really an At&t store. It was just some booth managed by this guy, who didn’t really care about At&t. He was an authorized dealer but more interested in getting a sale (probably due to some commission) than adherring to some stupid stipulation. I encourage anyone doing anything with a cellphone to double check with authorized dealers for such go-behind manuevors.

I was signed up in 10 mins and ready to go, though the actual 3G took another hour of talking on the phone to At&t. That’s a whole other story altogether.

The next day I was on the road, and that when where the technology let me down. On the road, outside major metropolitan areas, there are many places where 3G coverage fails, edge might work, but probably not, and even where cellular reception just doesn’t work at all. This is what awakened me to the failure of the iPhone dream.

When you get a data plan you’re thinking, “Great, Internet anywhere I need to go.” You learn pretty soon that it’s either too slow a lot of the time or, even in many metropolitan areas, there are dead spots. I’d be interested to see how many places where there is no 3G coverage but some wifi signal (albeit password protected) in the world. I guess with this querry I’m already dreaming of a technological utopia where people know that, unless you’re gaming live or watching Netflix, having an open network doesn’t really degrade your Internet speeds that much and/or even password protected networks degrade at times when other people on other networks by the same ISP are heavily using it. Another technological failure.

Back to the first failed iPhone dream. 3G sucks. Actually, the iPhone in general is a failed dream. With the promise of the Internet in the palm of your hand, anywhere you go, you find that the processor isn’t as fast as many computers (handheld failure) and that the infrastructure of cellphone towers/data service is subpar.

Also, most of the apps are poor substitutes for original sites, since the apps lack many capabilities—like not being able to change your location on Facebook. I understand the need for resizing and re-organizing websites for the screen, but they often look too much like a tree of variables, constrained to the capabilities of the hardware.

So when the dream was dead and I returned to civilization I ended my one-month contract. FYI, if it’s the last month of service, you can’t end at anytime and get pro-rated back what you didn’t use: most cellphone providers make you sit out till the end of the final month.