Pioneer on the Internet – Sean Gursky

Several months have passed and if I wasn’t keeping track I would have thought it had been longer. My transition from iPhone/Rogers to Android/Wind came together in an abrupt fashion. The move consumed my thoughts for days and then it happened and that was it. The dust has long since settled and I’m still happily using my Wind device and loving Android.

I have been told that my previous posts didn’t have any jubilation over Android, almost as if there was some hesitancy but I can say that I really do love Android, maybe not to the way I loved the iPhone because there are the occasional hiccups that make me shake my head and wonder how green the grass was beyond that fence.

It didn’t take as long as I thought but I am completely used to my Android device. My muscle memory has stopped trying to click on the home button, and as I continue to use Android going forward I may love it the same way I did the phone from Cupertino.

Battery Life
This is more a problem with the LG Optimus 2X than Android but one leads to the other so a hardware problem affects my enjoyment of Android. I have a charger at home, at work and in the car in order to keep my phone fully powered. If I know I’m going to be away from an outlet for a long period of time I charge a spare battery and take that with me. It’s a minor inconvenience but it’s something I have had to deal with while on Android.

I will say that battery life has improved significantly over the last few months due to the Cyanogenmod 7 nightly builds I put on the phone. As I use the multiple batteries I have I find they are getting better life but it’s a marginal increase. These improvements are minor but going from a 50% charge by noon to a 75% charge by noon is good but I am still a ways off from going a few days without plugging in.

Force Close
Facebooooook ()! Or maybe Android 2.3.7! Or maybe my CyanogenMod is to blame but either way it’s always with the Force Close for the Facebook application. It feels like a daily occurrence. It is a minor annoyance to click a button on the phone, wait a few seconds and click on the application but it’s one of the few small problems I have that make me wish for the functional and slick iOS feel.

Potpourri
I can’t stop saying it but I miss the polish and integration of iOS, even after months of using Android I still like the feel of iOS. However, I will open up a setting that was previously disabled to me on iOS, or enable my phone to do something that non-jailbroken iPhone’s couldn’t do and feel in awe of the device.

I feel that CyanogenMod is something that makes my Android device better. I am not restricted to LG releasing a new version of Android 2.3 after months of delays, I don’t have to wait and wonder if Ice Cream Sandwich will be released for my device because CyanogenMod will make something that will run on my phone, provide more options than I would have otherwise and release builds faster than LG can release new phones.

Having a functional phone that allows you to do what you want when you want, free of corporate application approval policies, is a beautiful thing and giving up a bit of polish is a small price to pay for that.

Wind has been treating me fine. There are times where I’m surprised to be within the Wind Home network, and others the signal can’t penetrate. I don’t have to rely on my phone within tall buildings downtown so the times I am without a signal are few and far between.

There was a period where I wasn’t connected to the data network so this made surfing the Internet outside a WiFi connection difficult. This was due to the APN not being set, or not being configured correctly. My phone had the correct APN data for the Wind network but it wouldn’t connect.

After going a few weeks without mobile data usage I decided to look into it further. I cleared the APN data, re-entered it, added values and removed them, all to no avail. Then after another round of testing and fumbling with the settings it worked. I wasn’t going to ask any questions, so I left things as they were and went from using 0K on the mobile network to as high as 22MB a week later ().

All in all I’m still happy on Wind and happier on Android. I love the possibilities with Android, the realization that anything is possible, and when I look at a 50% decrease in my phone bill I’m all the happier I made this transition.

I am no longer using an iPhone as my cellphone of choice.

Let that sink in for a moment. I have purchased an iPhone 3G, 3GS and 4 on launch days, lining up several hours before the store opened and I give up the Apple device so close to the release of the iPhone 5? How did this happen?

For the last few months Gord has been touting the joys of cheap () and reliable phone service from Wind. After looking at my $70+/month phone bill with great disgust I thought it was time to become contract free and save some money. Wind and Mobilicity operate on the AWS network band and this means that all available versions of the iPhone are incompatible so if I was going to make the switch I would have to (1) wait until T-Mobile became a carrier of the iPhone 5 (who operate on the AWS band) or (2) go in the opposite direction and use an Android device.

T-Mobile announced they would not be receiving the iPhone 5 so if I was going to be contract free it would be without Apple. I have always been curious about Android but had no reason to switch so Hell froze over and I made the move.

Mobilicity did not have coverage in Sherwood Park so I was limited to look at Wind phones. There are new Android devices released every month but Wind only had a few available to purchase, and even fewer were in stock.

I went to five different Wind locations (two at Blockbuster and three kiosks) before finding one that had the LG Optimus 2X in stock. I tried to phone in advance but no one answered the listed numbers so I had to drive to each and ask about their inventory levels. Gord gave me some assistance from Calgary as to which stores had the LG in stock but I was still turned down at the City Center kiosk.

I was willing to drive a bit to switch from Rogers but my patience was growing a little thin locating kiosks inside a mall. Thankfully Kingsway Mall would be my last stop as they had the LG in stock. The annoyance of driving around has long been forgotten and in the end it all worked out. The phone may not be one of the HTC brands I lust over but the the important thing is that I am off Rogers and am a free agent.

I love iOS and find the Android OS very confusing so I am faced with a bit of a learning curve. Millions of other people figured out Android so I’m sure I will in time, it will just take some hands on experience.

I sold my iPhone 4 to a co-worker and the money earned nearly paid for terminating my Rogers contract so that’s it. I’m an Android user. Maybe for a year, maybe forever. I do know I won’t go near another long term contract when there is now some much needed competition in the market.

I’ll write another post on my thoughts about Wind and Android in a few weeks time.

Update: The post regarding my first two weeks with Wind and Android is here.

I love my iPhone. For 25 months I have had that mobile device with me. It follows me everywhere and is an extension of my life. I have become increasingly dependent on it, and it wasn’t until that I no longer had the iPhone on me when I realized how much of my life revolved around this amazing device.

In anticipation of the iPhone 4 release I sold my iPhone 3GS early with hopes of beating a flooded market come July 30. Within hours the iPhone sold and I was put into purgatory with a BlackBerry Pearl as my mobile device.

The Pearl and iPhone are two different devices. I acknowledge that there are years of technology between them and it would be fair to compare the iPhone to a BlackBerry touch screen device but the Pearl is what I was given and here are my thoughts on the experience.

Going from a simple touch screen keyboard to a compact button keyboard was my biggest downfall. I couldn’t use the intuitive typing on the Pearl to save my life or spell anything. Eventually I had to enable multi-tap in the keyboard settings so I could have control over what it was going to type.

After a week of texting on the Pearl I started to get used to which letters required a single or double tap and I was making fewer mistakes, but it was still a nuisance. I’m sure if I had to use the Pearl full time I would have given the intelligent typing a try but for my short time with the phone I couldn’t be bothered with it. The tactile keyboard was nice but I prefer the benefits of a touch screen.

I found it difficult to rely on a trackball for navigation, I just wanted to touch the screen and let my fingers do the exploring. Display and speed were noticeable downgrades but they are forgivable based on the years that separate the phones, but it was something I had come to expect with my phone.

There were countless times I wanted to know what song was playing, check the weather, see what was happening on Twitter or see if I had any new emails and would instinctively reach for my iPhone…only to be disappointed it wasn’t there. I occasionally used the Browser on the Pearl but I found it slow and awkward to type in addresses so I restricted my movement online.

I will give the Pearl credit for the shape. It was small and sturdy in my hands but didn’t feel fragile. If the phone was dropped and had to be put back together the cover, battery and SIM card were all that needed to be reattached (not from personal experience but have seen it a few times) without any significant damage to the device.

Another nice feature of the Pearl (or any BlackBerry) is the control you have over ringers. You can customize the vibrate and tone settings depending on what active state the phone is in and having it vibrate before a text or phone call comes in was a very nice feature. I liked the LED indicator on top of the phone which would blink if I had a message.

With an iPhone 4 in hand I am not sad to see the Pearl go back to where it came, but I’m glad I had a chance to experience a different phone so I can see how other people use their mobile device.

Which brings me to how did I get the iPhone 4 on launch day?

I arrived at a Rogers store at 6:10AM and was sixth in line. At 8:00AM the first three people were let in and by 9:00AM they left with their phones in hand and the next three were allowed in the store. At this time the hold time to reach someone to activate the phone (since their computer systems were crippled under the stress) had increased from a 40 minute wait time to over 2 hours. Shortly after 11:00AM the calls were being picked up and the phone purchase could continue.

The atmosphere in line was excited and a little tense. There were maybe only a dozen phones in stock, but that number was not disclosed to the 20+ that waited to get in until later in the morning, after they had been waiting for hours, which was a huge disappointment to a lot of people. Rogers iPhone stock in Edmonton quickly ran dry and anyone looking for the phone in the afternoon was out of luck.

Around 7:00AM Bryce Kelley from Sonic 102.9 came and interviewed a few people in line. He asked a group of us how long we had been in line for, what we thought about the reception problem (if it was a problem to us) and how our employers felt about missing work to buy a phone. I didn’t hear the interview but Sarah heard a bit of it and immediately recognized my voice so one of my responses was used on air.

Every year an iPhone is released I tell myself I won’t go through it again, and as I pulled out of the Rogers parking lot (five hours after I arrived) I swore off launch day purchases again. Yet, there is something fun having a just released phone and knowing you have the maximum amount of time with it and can start enjoying it now. Although, this comes with the anxiety of minimal information prior to launch, wondering which location to buy it from and curious about what the stock was going to be like.

However, I won’t have to worry about those problems or being without an iPhone…until next year when the new model is released and I go through this turmoil all over again.