I have a confession to make; I am a geek, and I have cell phone envy.
Right. I have two confessions to make; I am a geek, I have cell phone envy, and I still carry a torch for Areej Ayaat. I - o-kaaaaay... Monty Python did this first, and they did it better.
However, I am a Geek and I do have cell phone envy, specifically of the new Android-based handsets that are being released these days. In fact, I am so much enamored by these phones (or, fed-up with my current handset) that I have been dreaming about them. Slightly embarrassing to admit, yes, but what good is my embarrassment if not to help others feel better about their own make others laugh? What would really be embarrassing would be if I were to admit something along the lines of dreaming about getting a new phone, say, perhaps the myTouch 3G in magenta, while also dreaming about attractive women, and then waking up in the morning and not knowing which one excited me more! Ha. Ha. Ha... ha.
No, that would just be silly.
Something else that is silly, but yet doesn't reflect quite as poorly on me, is the fact that despite being the first carrier to offer them, T-Mobile has some of the worst Android phones on the market. Now, why do I care what phones T-Mobile offers? Easy, I have been a loyal T-Mo customer since 2001 and have little enough reason to change now. Little enough reason except for maybe the Samsung Moment on Sprint, or the Motorola DROID on Verizon. Now, compare those two phones to the Motorola CLIQ that T-Mobile offers. Too lazy to sort through the links? Fine, I'll summarize; while the hardware is solid (if unimpressive) the Moto CLIQ is hobbled with the MOTOBLUR UI which overlays the Android OS, while the DROID and Moment are running the stock Android UI. No big deal for most users, but as I am a Geek, I find it offensive.
I don't want Motorola's crippled UI eating up system resources, and preventing me from updating the stock Android 1.5 kernel to 1.6 or 2.0! I also want to decide which, if any, of my social networking accounts get loaded onto my phone, and frankly, I would much rather have a 3rd party Twitter app like Swift than rely on whatever Motorola half-baked this week.
So why don't I just jump ship and go to either Sprint or Verizon? Well, the DROID is out because while Verizon may have the most reliable* network in the rest of the country, their reception in Alta is abysmal! We can always tell which of our guests at the Lodge have Verizon because they wander through the halls, phones held out in front of them as they squint at the screen, searching in vain for a decent signal. Sprint is currently out simply because their plans cost more than T-Mobile's.
But wait, one might cry out in startled revelation, surely those are not the only Android phones offered by each carrier! To which I would haughtily reply that it is for Verizon! But yes, Sprint does offer the HTC Hero, which is the half-sibling to T-Mobile's myTouch 3G. However, the CLIQ, the DROID, and the Moment are all qwerty handset, meaning they have slide out keyboards. The myTouch and the Hero do not and that is something of a deal breaker.
And yes, T-Mobile also carries the G1, but - uh, yeah. I want an Android phone, not a Fisher-Price toy.
*or close enough for marketing purposes
