Yesterday I gave up on smartphones. I tried to like them – I really did. But Sunday, the two-year contract on my Verizon Droid Incredible was up, and rather than upgrade to a newer device with a new contract, I’ve dropped back to a feature phone and switched to a prepaid calling plan.
Two years ago, I was eager to jump on the smartphone bandwagon. I wanted the Google Nexus, and rumors about it coming to Verizon were swirling in the tech blogs. As it turned out, the Verizon Droid Incredible specifications were close to the Nexus, and so I signed up for it on the first day it was offered. Once I verified I could make and receive calls on it at home, I shut down my land line and ported the number to the Droid. I was gung ho, as they say.
Little Disappointments Add Up
The past two years with the Droid Incredible have been a series of little disappointments and annoyances.
- There wasn’t really a functioning Twitter client for the Android.
- The screen was too small for reading.
- Typing on the on-screen keyboard was slow, cumbersome and error-prone.
- Battery life – with all the radios enabled it couldn’t go a full work day without needing a recharge.
- The color balance on the camera was awful and couldn’t be adjusted.
- The browser was Internet Explorer-level functionality.
- I needed a GMail account to get software updates.
- Operating system updates were rare, even though Google is constantly updating Android. I finally got Gingerbread late last year!
- The phone came loaded with crapware and applications you couldn’t remove, like Adobe Reader, Facebook and Skype.
To sum up, the only functional improvement over its predecessor, an LG ENV, was replacement of a 1.3 megapixel camera with an 8 megapixel camera. The PDA functionality in smartphones isn’t significantly better than what’s in a feature phone. The browser in the Incredible isn’t a lot better than the WAP browser in the ENV.
“New Every Two”
Late last December, I became eligible for a discounted upgrade via Verizon’s “New Every Two” program..So I looked at the upgrade options. They were
- A 3G iPhone 4S, which, my friends tell me, isn’t great on Verizon, because you can’t talk and send/receive data at the same time,
- A 4G LTE Google / Samsung Galaxy Nexus shipping with Ice Cream Sandwich,
- A few other 4G phones that were listed as “Ice-Cream-Sandwich-ready” but shipping with Gingerbread.
Then came the what turned out to be the deal-breaker. The Incredible was on an unlimited data plan. If I upgraded the device, I’d need a new data plan. and a new, more expensive voice calling plan. The new data plans for both 3G and 4G are severely bandwidth-capped. Instead of paying about $75 a month for voice and unlimited data, I’d be paying $90 a month for my usage level. And given my experience with upgrades on the Incredible, unless I got the Galaxy Nexus I had zero confidence that I’d ever see Ice Cream Sandwich. Verizon had priced themselves out of my budget, and only a single operating system upgrade in two years did not inspire confidence.
Waiting it Out
So I chose to wait the four months for the contract to expire rather than upgrade early. Perhaps, I thought, by the end of April, there will be more devices actually shipping with Ice Cream Sandwich on Verizon. Perhaps the 3G data plan on the iPhone will be priced competitively, given that concurrent voice and data transmission can’t be done, and that 3G bandwidth is less expensive for Verizon to provide than 4G bandwidth. Perhaps a there will even be a Windows Phone on Verizon with some compelling functionality that I can’t get with an iPhone, an Android, or a feature phone.
None of that happened. To move ahead to the next state-of-the-art smartphone, I would need to make a $2400 commitment for two years, with absolutely no guarantee that the phone in my hand even three months from now wouldn’t be surpassed by something that’s much better.
A Miasma of Vaporware and Planned Obsolescence
The Android device marketplace is a train wreck. There are dozens of devices running Gingerbread. There are two major tablet families – Kindle Fire and Nook Tablet – that are locked-down Android forks with their own bizarre user interfaces. Ice Cream Sandwich is barely shipping and already Google is hawking Jellybean and Key Lime Pie vaporware.
Even worse, the device makers and the carriers add their own software layers, raising the complexity of the code on the devices enough to require many additional engineering hours of testing. All of these vendors need to have detailed engineering and business partnerships or nothing gets done. It’s a wonder any software enhancements happen. It’s a wonder any independent developers will develop applications for Android. It’s chaos – a miasma of vaporware and planned obsolescence reminiscent of the tail-fin era in American automotive design.
The Bottom Line
In the end, it came down to cost. I simply couldn’t justify spending $90 a month on a device harder to read on than my Kindle 3G or Nook Tablet. I couldn’t justify a $600 pocket computer with an unusable “keyboard”, no pointing device, an eighth of the RAM and a twelfth of the compute power of a laptop that sells for the same price. I couldn’t resign myself to two more years of a screen and browser so limited that webmasters have to install additional code on their sites just so I can view them..
So I have given up on smartphones. I have given up on Android. I have given up on Verizon. I’ve purchased an AT&T GoPhone® and signed up for a $25/month prepaid plan. My monthly wireless bill is now a third of what it was. It will take me a few days to port the old phone number to Google Voice, and that will end my decade-long relationship with Verizon.
And what’s in store for the Incredible? I’m going to root it, add a huge microSD card and use it as a point-and-shoot camera with a lot of picture storage and WiFi. The camera itself is fine for a point-and- shoot; it’s the software that’s broken.
