iPhone 3G

The Vera household has been a bit hostile since my dear mother in law came for her yearly summer visit. I love my mother in law, god bless her, the problem is her daughter, that is, my wife.

Whenever her mother is here she goes batshit.

This time the ordeal started because MIL wanted to buy an iPhone 3G for her other daughter, who is already with AT&T in Puerto Rico.

The problem: nobody would sell her one at the upgrade price, she needed the account holder in person.

After a week of FAIL, and without asking me, All Mighty Alpha Nerd and Master of Technical Decisions in the Vera Household, they decided to upgrade Ivette's iPhone 8GB to an iPhone 3G 16GB, then the deactivated iPhone 8GB could go to her sisters. That's a $300 upgrade for a phone that commands more than that on eBay.

I was furious, because as All Mighty Alpha Nerd and Master of Technical Decisions in the Vera Household, I feel entitled to always have the newest toy. I could not tolerate using an iPhone 8GB when my wife had an iPhone 3G 16GB.

No god damn way.

Of course, I couldn't afford to pay for upgrading my own, at least not yet, so I resorted to bitching and moaning. And lecturing.

For example, they went out for a drive and called me in a panic because they got lost in South East DC.

While carrying an iPhone 3G, which has fucking GPS in it.

Yeah, you can feel the rage already. It takes two lousy clicks to find out where you are at:

1. Click on the maps button



2. Click on the location button

That's it, you are done. If in range of GPS, it tells you exactly where you are at. Otherwise it tries to use cell towers and known wifi hotspots to give you a circle of uncertainty. The smaller the circle, the better the prediction is. In my old iPhone I had the triangulation peg my location within a car length, which is pretty damn impressive when you take into account what happens to GPS if selective availability happens to be enabled for your area.

After a week of bitching, moaning, pleading, etc. I wore them down and they upgraded mine, so now I also have an iPhone 3G 16GB, and my old phone (sorry Brian) is going to be my MIL's.

Now comes the best part: what the fuck for?

From my desk I still can't get 3G (but the Kindle can see it just fine, thank you). And my wireless access point decided that it won't let me login so I can add the mac address of the new phones, so I am surfing on EDGE while sitting 6 feet away from a wireless access point connected to 16MB cable!

What's different about the new phone?

1. It's lighter.



2. The buttons are chromed.



3. It smudges twice as much as my old one, because the back is now glossy black.



4. Now I don't have a dock.



5. And the AC adapter is maybe 1/4th the size of the old one, so it is even easier to lose.



6. And except for 3G, and it having twice as much storage capacity, and GPS, the device has the exact same feature set as my old phone.



7. The bill is now magically $15 more per phone.



8. The camera doesn't have the weird color spot that the old phones have, at least as far as I can tell.



9. Maybe it is a placebo effect, but normal voice calls are a bit better.

That's about it.

In terms of aesthetics, I still think the original back cover looks classier than the new glossy back. I haven't seen the white phone in person, I imagine it will be the ultimate chick phone (sorry Brad).