Smart. Phone.

not my iphone ... yet

I hate my iPhone 3G, I absolutely hate it. There was a point in time when this wasn't the case. Two years ago when I first got the phone it was still pretty decent, in fact it remained pretty decent up until the OS4 update. At that point Apple basically decided that they no longer cared to support the 3G and 3GS and launched an update that was great for the iPhone 4, but caused the older phones to chug like an old Ford Model T. They released an update shortly after that alleviated some of the problems, but unless you had a 3GS, you weren't going to feel it. My phone instantly became a paper weight with minimal computing power. Opening most apps (even the phone settings) took forever, often long enough to make the process time-out on the first try. Forget about anything net related, I was going to have to wait extra long for those apps to work. My phone, which had once been quite adequate, was now a thorn in my side. It was obvious I needed an upgrade, but what to upgrade to?

Existentially speaking I am not a Mac, I'm a PC. I'm what some might call a power user. I build my own computers, I tweak settings, I like knowing what's going on and how to fix it. Apple doesn't want you to have to think about any of these things and they make you pay for the privilege. As my first smartphone, the iPhone was the right choice at the time, but the Android OS and phones have come a long way since then; enter the Samsung Galaxy S2. For all intents and purposes this phone took Europe by storm this past spring. If there was a phone that could rival Apple's best efforts, this was it. There was only one problem,  no one knew when it was coming to the US. Regardless, I knew this was the phone I wanted to upgrade to and I was willing to wait. Rumor-filled months passed and the Galaxy S2 was always just around the corner until finally in September it launched for Sprint, with the AT&T released rumored to be right around the corner. A couple weeks later a date was finally announced: October 2nd. If my iPhone could sweat, it would have been drenched, its days were numbered.

The morning of October 2nd comes and I head over to the AT&T store when they open at noon. Immediately I ask about the Galaxy S2.

"The Galaxy S2 isn't available in the South region yet. We don't expect it to be available till the end of the quarter."

The end of the quarter? Really? The quarter that just started? I realize that large swaths of the South might not be what us New England ex-pats might consider to be tech savvy and thus not as interested in an iPhone killing smartphone, but can't we at least make an exception for Austin, the Northeast of the deep south?

The answer (by the way) is apparently no, but you can order the Galaxy S2 online. Given the alternative of waiting until the end of the quarter, waiting for shipping on an online order doesn't seem so bad. Let me just fire up the old PC here and see what we can see. Oh well this looks easy, there's a link to upgrade my phone. Oh and the S2 is one of the options, perfect.

Type type ... Click click

What's that? You need my work email in order to carry over my discount? No problem.

Type type ... Click click

Wait ... the next step is to click on the link in the email you sent me and verify the address? The email you sent to my work address? The work address I won't be able to check until I go in to work tomorrow? Well then ...

So now I can't complete the order for my new phone until tomorrow and I still don't know how long it will take to get here once I do. Whatever it is, it will be quicker than THE END OF THE QUARTER! I just can't win. Curse you Steve Jobs, you've won again! Seriously though, this whole experience with the Galaxy S2 launching in the US has been absurd and I guarantee you that when the iPhone 5 is released, they won't be telling people "The iPhone 5 isn't available in the South region yet." There's a lesson here:

AT&T hates you if you're not Apple. And Apple sucks, except when they don't. And the South ... you're on notice ...