Rage Against The Machine (Or Buy A New One)

Boys and girls, here at Blog You Like A Hurricane’s international headquarters we are absolutely committed to the truth. We ARE going to let our campaign for blog world domination be ruled by the fact checkers.   

With that in mind, it is my duty to report to you a very sad event which occurred this week which, some might say, completely pulls the rug out from under my entire epic blog from last week. But facts are stubborn things---even more stubborn than me.

You may recall I sang the praises of the HTC One X smartphone. It has zoom functionality which leaves the iPhone in the dust. It also has the clearest, sharpest, most drop dead gorgeous screen I’ve ever seen on a computerized device ever. But…..I took it from its charger on Wednesday morning and discovered the screen was black. I played around with it, restarted it a couple times and it worked for the rest of the day. Thank God that problem was over! But on Thursday morning the same exact Black Screen Of Death occurred. I tried everything and nothing worked. It had gotten colder at night. Please don't tell me my beautiful screen couldn't handle 50 degree weather.

 

After work I biked down to the AT&T store. The guy agreed it was broken and he also agreed it showed no evidence of water damage. He then explained my two options: get in my car and drive to their warranty center located in beautiful Wallingford, CT. Or if, say, my car was in the shop, I could call their Warranty Hotline and have a new phone mailed to me in a few short days!

A few days? This was a real moment of clarity for me. A painful bit of self-realization. Telling me I can’t have a phone for a few days is like telling a junkie he can’t have heroin until Thursday. Come on AT LEAST offer me some methadone!

I'm proud to report I resisted the tempation to hold up a 7-Eleven to help pay for a brand new phone bought out of contract. Before I explain what I did, let me backtrack slightly. For the last several months my computer at work has been running poorly. Annoyingly enough, it hasn’t been running poorly enough to completely shut down or blow up, just poor enough to cause hassles and semi-regular interruptions of my work—last Tuesday morning, for example, it literally took me 45 minutes worth of shutting down and restarting and logging off and logging back on to get started on my work for the day. I’ve now complained enough that they are getting me a brand new computer and I’m still holding out hope for a 27 inch monitor which can largely negate my need for magnification software in the first place—as said software has been causing all the trouble even though it ran for years at work without major issues. Nothing is more stressful and demoralizing than having computer problems which go on--especially when you are the only one having them and the very reason you are having them is because you need “special” software. Needing to make that a focal point represents the very opposite of how I’ve tried to live my life: i.e., just like everyone else.

So in that context, my patience with phone problems as well was bound to be paper thin. I noticed that the AT@T store actually had my phone on display so the guy obviously could have gone back to the storeroom and replaced it. But he didn’t. So I called an audible and biked down to the Verizon store, transferred my account to them, got a new phone since they don't carry this particular HTC, and decided to just brace myself. I had only recently renewed my AT&T contract so I’m pretty sure I’m going to get absolutely raped with early termination fees. Even Senator Todd Akin will consider this a real rape.

Okay, that wasn’t a smart decision. But in my defense, I have been faced with TWO malfunctioning machines in recent months, the only two that I absolutely need to work: my work computer and my phone. Computers are amazing, but they are the most annoying things on earth when they stop working right.

The phone I got this time: the Samsung Galaxy SIII. This is the other high end Android phone that came out earlier this summer. The Galaxy is actually the more hyped of the two…..but it’s all about deeper advertising pockets since it’s just not quite as good as the HTC. Its screen is actually slightly bigger--4.8 inches to 4.7 inches—but it uses something called a Pentile display which differs from a traditional LCD display. How? I have no idea. It apparently borrows pixels for multiple colors instead of using specific pixels for specific colors---or something like that. But my eyes tell me it makes everything—including text--slightly less sharp.

So…….I face yet another crucial decision. As far as my AT&T account goes, the deed is done. But now that I’m back with Verizon, I have 14 days to decide if I want this phone. I’m not sure if I do or not. The less than beautiful screen just seems to highlight some annoying Android traits. At the top of the list: all those apps! My phone has 45 apps installed on it. Guess how many I actually downloaded? Three. What’s most annoying of all is you can’t delete them and THEY ARE ALWAYS RUNNING IN THE BACKGROUND. This drains your battery life for no reason. I guess you can power off every single time you aren’t using the phone, but that’s a pain. You can readjust the settings to disable apps or “force stop” them but this doesn’t seem to completely work. Or you can download an app that will help you force the other apps to stop running but in the process you’ve just created another app which has to run in the background to tell other apps to stop running in the background. It's kind of like solving your whiskey problem with vodka. The apps are like flies that keep getting in your house when you can’t even locate the hole in the screen they seem to be crawling in under! Okay, a maps app is cool. But do I need a latitude app as well?? What’s next? A sea level app? These apps will be key for me the next time I sail to Madagascar. My Application Manager tells me 16 apps are running as we speak. Why are they running? I have no clue! I’ve heard people complain Android phones are too complicated to use. I haven’t found that to be the case. You just have to get used to them. But my beef is they don’t give me enough control. If you want to pre-install a bunch of crap, that’s cool, but at least let me decide what I can delete and if I can’t delete them, at least let me stop them from running.     

And here is where I…..have to give Apple some credit. My Ipad has 20 pre-installed apps. My Ipod Touch has 22. Niether have the Phone app, so on an iPhone it’s what? 23 or 24? And the only 3rd party apps are Safari (which blows compared with Opera or Chrome)  and Youtube—which is apparently going away since Google owns Youtube and Google also owns Android so Google is standing in Apple’s path to world domination and they make a better door than a window. But as far as I can tell, Apple apps aren’t endlessly updating in the background like electronic bedbugs breeding behind your walls.  

And, truth be told, Apple’s stuff seems to be more reliable—possibly because of their extreme idiot proof "let's cut throught the bullshit" implicity. I had an iPhone 4 for two years and I did get it replaced once. It started acting strange…..but I had dropped it a few times. And the Apple Store did replace it on the spot instead of making me drive to Wallingford. During two major power outages last year, about the only things that still worked were my iPhone and iPad. I would not have retained my sanity without them.

HTC’s motto is Quietly Brilliant. And they are right. Their latest phone is amazing. Apple’s motto should be Loudly Reliable. The actual benefit of Apple’s stuff is the opposite of what their marketing says it is. Despite what they claim, none of their products are all that innovative. The new iPhone has a bigger screen. Cool…….except it’s still smaller than many Android screens. It has 4G LTE. Cool……except my phone already has that. They have 8 megapixel cameras. Can you see where this is going? My phone already has that. BUT…..there is a good chance it will be more reliable and have better battery life. So based on those rather boring considerations, it might in fact be as great as they claim.

Android is like that incredibly beautiful girl you become hopelessly smitten by until you get to know her better and start to have nagging doubts about whether coping with her high maintenance ways is worth it. What’s the old saying? “No matter how hot the operating system is, someone, somewhere is sick of her shit?”. Apple is the down to earth girl next door who doesn’t really turn any heads but you can trust her.

So what I’m trying to say is……I’ll see you in line for the new iPhone 5!

Actually that might not be possible. I just don't see myself camping out so I can talk to Siri the next morning. And the odds of finding any in stock before my 14 day return options expire seem slim. But besides…..their zoom function sucks!

But why has a smarphone become such a necessity to me when it’s clearly a luxury? Do any of us need portable computers in our pockets? I didn’t even get one until two years ago-I assumed the screens were too small for me to see and anyone who needed more than a cellphone was CLEARLY someone with issues. I didn’t realize the very high “pixel density” of these screens creates enough clarity to somewhat compensate for their lack of size. Size matters. But only so much.   

Plus all these storms happened and luxury items became necessities. In the world of climate change, the future belongs to battery operated devices.

Well I’ll probably stick with my new, new phone. It’s just an emotional time for me right now. I’m just getting out of a two year relationship with Apple followed by a hot summer fling with HTC. I’m just not sure if I’m ready for a committed relationship with Samsung. I’ve been hurt before.

But if this thing acts up I will probably make another horrible financial decision and end up buying the iPhone 5 out of contract. Don’t make me do it!