Google Hero vs. Apple iPhone….
February 3rd, 2010 Posted in Technology
photo credit: dailylifeofmojo
Recently I decided to explore my options with getting a new phone for the wife and I. I have had an iPhone since the first generation phone was launched for over $600. True be it that I am a mac enthusiast in all sense of the definition. With the most recent launch of the iPad and the agreement for which AT&T will provide the data services, this created some internal questions.
Now let me preface with this…. I have had zero issues with AT&T in regards to signal and connection speed. Both my wife and I loved the phones as well as the service. Now comes the let down. We were paying roughly $215 a month for service. Nothing special added to it other than text messaging, data services and the family plan. I started investigating around and found that switching to another carrier would save me over $120 a month. Who in their right mind wouldn’t switch carrier to save that much loot each month. Now mind you, this comparison is for the exact same features and minutes as AT&T gave us. At first my motivation was simply to save money. Then I realized that I would have access to the HTC Hero on Sprint. At first I thought there was no way in hell a phone could be better then my iPhone. That thing is amazing. I can run my whole company Left Hand Clothing from the road on the iPhone. As I was in the store the wife and I agreed we would try it. Sprint has a 30 day guarantee. If you do not like it, bring it on back. So that was the premise we were going on. I bring the new toy home and start messing with it. Few hours on it, nothing special. Gave up early and decided I would mess with it more the next day. Next day came and I played with with it all day long………. (keep your minds out of the gutter). This thing was amazing. Not only could I get most of the same apps as my iPhone on it and those that were not the same, I found suitable substitutes for them. Task number one…. still be able to conduct business… CHECK! Next I wanted to see how well the data connection was. Now in our house the signal was not that great. Previously with AT&T we had full bars all over the house. With sprint we had three on average. Not bad, but not what we were use to receiving. I started investigating and realized that sprint had a femtocell option that we could use. The best part about this little gadget is that it will link your broadband internet to your cell and give you 5 bars of service all over the house. Beautiful part of it, only an extra $4.99 a month to use the service after I buy the gadget off of eBay for around $50 to $60 bucks. So the fact that the signal is less that what we were use to is fine with us. Task number two…. be able to use the phone at home and around town… CHECK! Next I played with the layout and themes on the phone. This phone was amazing. It let me only put the shortcuts of my most used apps on the screens while the remaining apps were accessible with only one button press. It also let me add widgets to any of the screens that would give me real-time snap shots of the time/date, weather for my area, scheduler, emails and so much more. They truly made all the items that I needed information available instantly with a simple glance. No longer would I need to flip pages, open the program and wait for the new information to load. Task number three… creating the phone the way that I wanted and liked… CHECK! At this point I am really excited about the change we made. From time to time I would travel with my small netbook and use a Cricket communications air card. Quick recap for those of you that do not have Cricket in your city. Cricket offers no contract cellular service for rather low prices. Small coverage footprint but available in a ton of major cities. When I was in need of an air card for casual use, they fit the need perfectly. They charged roughly $45 a month for 5GB of bandwidth and you could cancel at anytime. Now I started looking for ways to do this on my new phone. In comes PDAnet. PDAnet offers an application that sits on the phone while another on your computer. Once both programs are installed, it creates a link between the computer and the 3G data connection on the phone. At first I was skeptical that this would work. BAM! Right out of the download and installed, it worked like a charm. Not only do they offer a connection for Android but they offer it for Black Berry, Palm and iPhone (jail broken of course). Task number bonus… Eliminate my $45 a month air card and sacrifice nothing… CHECK!
So in closing we are both extremely happy with our switch. Who knows what the future will hold, eventually we may find ourselves back to an iPhone. But at this time we do not see the need to spend more and get less. Hopefully Apple will step up their game and create a killer new version and make us jealous that we switched.
Be sure to check out Left Hand Clothing. We create and design Pittsburgh inspired t shirts!
