I'm seriously debating pre-ordering one on February 3rd as I'm an existing Verizon customer. My only hold-up is whether or not they'll release and LTE version in June. Assuming Apple does have the hardware ready by then, what's the likelyhood of Verizon having a substantial LTE presence by then as well?
Does anyone know what their LTE coverage looks like or how soon it'll match their 3G coverage? I'm under the impression LTE is only in major cities at the moment.
I highly recommend (as I do to all interested family, friends, and coworkers) that you wait, just a few months, until Apple has launched the new iPhone.
The worst case is that the iPhone 4 will be half the price of what it is today and you waited a bit (assuming no beneficial upgrades; unlikely) and the best case is that you'll get the new phone, with all of its features benefits, for the same price of today's iPhone 4 (much more likely).
I really hope this year is the year iOS also gets a refresh too. Apple has really let it stagnate and let their hardware do the talking. Windows Phone 7, I think, is a much prettier interface. Android has some killer features, like Navigation. Apple has the apps, which I guess is a perpetual motion machine for them, but iOS feels old. I worry that that won't change, as Mac OS has stayed fairly stationary from a UI perspective since 10.3, despite obvious and continually complained about problems, such as Finder.
I think the thing that turns me off is that Apple don't really want to make a communicator or a dumb terminal, they want to make a small computer. That the notification system has been so broken for so long, and the cloud integration has been non-existant, shows that Apple really aren't all that interested in the "phone" aspect. I think that's a real shame.
Android does it right: "What's your Google Account?" taptaptap "Oh hey, great. Here's all your contacts, all your email, all your calendar appointments. Good thing the Internet exists. Have fun."
No no, they've had feature patches on top of the UI they've already got. If you take my original first-gen iPod Touch and compare it to iOS 4, the differences are largely hardware, plus multitasking.
I would like a rethink of the icon grid, of staticness (like how the Calendar app doesn't actually show the correct date) and the like.
To be honest, I haven't really surveyed the competition recently. I'm currently using the HTC/Droid Incredible and aesthetically, I love it. It's sleek, I love the feel of it in my hands and the durability is great. HTC Sense is also a nice sheen on top of Android, but I hate waiting for updates while HTC battle tests the new versions of Android. I could stick with Android and get a vanilla install on a Motorola, but I haven't seen one that I like the looks of yet. Maybe I should look through the latest offerings from CES as you mentioned, but the original Droid, Droid X and Droid Pro just haven't peeked my interest.
Even though I'm a programmer (web developer), I'm not one to tinker with my phones so rooting and getting exactly what I want out of my Incredible doesn't appeal to me too much.
I suppose I'd be lying if I didn't add that there is a small protion of me that is an Apple Fanboy as well. I know their products are overpriced; I cringe at paying $100 for an extra 16gb of RAM instead of being able to pick up a cheap SD card. I also know that iOS is inferior in ways to Android, but Apple just sells it to me better than Google does somehow.
Realistically I don't have enough reasons to justify the switch, I really don't. But sometimes you know you want something and you just can't reason as to why.
I will, of course, do some more research before I decide to make a purchase. I appreciate you reminding me to check out thew new stuff that came out of CES. Any device(s) in particular you would suggest taking a look at?
Thanks for the feedback. :-) I'm trying to get a sense of which devices various people prefer. I get what you're saying about the "Apple allure" -- although other devices now are very, very close to Apple's design, there's still something compelling about Apple's presentation and overarching design of its products.
As for the new stuff at CES, there were a handful of pretty powerful new devices announced, but the two that really caught my attention were the Motorola Droid Bionic and the Motorola Atrix. All of the feedback on the Bionic has been positive so far, with a lot of it centering on how fast the device feels. The Atrix really stole the show though -- it's a phone that can be docked into a laptop or desktop form factor and used almost like a normal computer for most tasks. Expensive though, but a really cool concept.
Yes, that's the word I was trying to think of and couldn't: "allure". And you're right, Apple definitely has it in droves.
Anyway, thanks for listing off the Bionic and the Atrix. I had heard a bit about the Bionic, but nothing about the Atrix so I'm off to check those out. The Atrix does sound incredibly cool.
Does anyone know what their LTE coverage looks like or how soon it'll match their 3G coverage? I'm under the impression LTE is only in major cities at the moment.