iPadawan - pt 12: Mobile Madness

I'm back from holiday (again)! Thanks to Frans-Jozef Rutjes & Sharon Ritchey for holding down the fort while I've been away. There'll be some more guest blogs in the future, but for now, it's back to me!

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So, I took a holiday without the iPad. A couple of weeks before I left I thought about taking it, but my mum really didn’t want to part with it and I did buy it for her after all. The thing is, when you get used to travelling around with a device like that, the thought of being without one is difficult to describe. How would I watch whatever I wanted to watch in my hotel room without paying rip off prices? How would I type email comfortably? How would I read my comics? How would I listen to my UK radio stations? Most importantly of all, how would I show off to all my friends in Germany & Holland? How would I manage? How would I cope? Only one thing for it... Buy another one?

No!

No. No. No. That would be impossible to justify. The truth is, since I gave it to my mum, I only use it when I’m visiting and then only when I’m sitting in the lounge. I don’t miss it though. As I’ve said here previously, it slipped into our daily routine really easily, but when you don’t need it, you don’t miss it. That sounds like an odd thing to say, but I know people who clutch and stare at their phones even when it’s not ringing or when they don’t need to make a call.

Surely the only thing I’d be missing on my travels would be the effortlessness of using the iPad for things like email, music, radio, etc. - not actually the tasks themselves. I could do them all with my mobile phone, just not as comfortably. I resolved that I would make do as I had always done (right up until April this year): mobile phone and iPod touch. That combo would work fine - I could make do with the limited email and Internet functionality on my phone and if Wi-Fi was available (which it often would be) I could use the  iPod Touch. Another iPad would be a flagrant indulgence.

Then disaster struck. My trusty mobile phone died. Or rather, the internal speaker died. I could only make calls using the hands free. The battery had been dying for a while and I knew that in a few months it would need replacing, but not now dammit! What to do? What to do? I certainly didn’t want to travel around mainland Europe without a phone. Can you imagine doing such a thing? Going travelling and not being able to have instant contact with anyone, anywhere? That’s so last century! Perhaps this was a sign? Perhaps it was time to really catch up with technology and... get an iPhone?

No!

I don’t want an iPhone. Too expensive. As someone who purchases their handsets (it’s actually cheaper than getting one ’for free’ on contract) I wasn’t prepared to spend upwards of £419. (That’s $630 USD. Yeah, that’s right! In the UK they cost as much as an iPad does in America. Don’t get me started on rip-off Britain!) Surely there must be a cheaper option with the same functionality? Then it hit me: Android! That would cover my phone issues and everything else. Or so they say...

Android is the Google OS that has been shipping on smart-phones for the last couple of years. Recently it has really started to gain momentum, catching up and surpassing the iPhone in terms of new sales. Android is available on a multitude of different handsets from a wide range of manufacturers, so surely there would be something that suited me?

Indeed, it turns out that there are a massive number of Android handsets on the market. Each manufacturer seems to have at least 2 models, maybe more. With barely 2 weeks to go before my planned trip, how would I select the right one? I needed advice and a recommendation. You know what that means don’t you? That’s right: Facebook & Twitter, font of all common knowledge of ‘The People’.

Literally within minutes of posting a question about ‘which phone I should get’ the answers were flying in thick and fast. After deflecting the iPhone users and a couple of negative comments about the iPad (go figure!), there seemed to be a clear contender. The HTC Desire.

So I did a bit of research on my own and decided that it was, at least on paper, the device which ticked the most boxes: It had all the regular phone extras (bluetooth, wi-fi, camera) plus Android for additional apps (facebook, twitter, gmail, etc). Perfect.

I had it for a week. Then I sent it back.  Here’s why.

It was actually quite good at stuff. Facebook app, twitter, weather, train timetables, etc., etc. So good in fact that I found myself using the handset all the time. I was constantly fiddling with it. I became one of those clutchers that I mentioned at the beginning of this piece. At first I thought it was just what happens when you get a new toy, but after a few days I still hadn’t stopped.

Part of the reason was that I was trying to get it to function like my iPod touch. I wanted to use it in a way that I’d be comfortable with. But I couldn’t... because it’s not an iPod touch! I also couldn’t get it to function like my SonyEricsson. So after a couple of days of battling with customization, I reset the phone in firmware and went ‘full android’, using the suggested set-ups, interface schemes and apps. I spoke to other Android users for tips on how to manage my contact list. “Simple”, they said, “sort it all out on google first and then just sync the phone”. So I did.

I have a lot of contacts in my gmail. It took me four f***ing hours. At first the idea of a combined address book for your email and phone sounds like a good idea. But after a few days I realised that most of the people I email are totally different from the people I call. So finding and making calls to people became a chore. I had to create a page of favourites, due to there now being nearly 700 names in my phone address book (as opposed to about 70 previously).

And that’s when the phone started to get too smart for its own good. It decided to synchronise my facebook, twitter & gmail contacts. It figured out who was who, combined pictures, numbers and details. Again, at first this sounds great, but it isn’t. My carefully constructed address book turned into a mess. Numbers I had nurtured for years ended up being combined into online profiles which hadn’t been updated in years. Even now, several weeks later I’m still trying to fix the damage of lost or down-dated contacts.

Thus, I realised that contact management and quick access to numbers and services is the essence of a mobile phone. Not the apps. Not the big screen. If it becomes hard work to find the person, and subsequently the number of that person, then the experience of making a phone call can become surprisingly unpleasant. Add to that things like accessing voicemail and turning the phone to silent taking ages, due to so many screens of navigation, and I was ready to hurl the phone at a wall.

The HTC desire might have been really good at doing stuff, but it wasn’t particularly good at being a phone.

That’s when I stopped fiddling and started to really look at the phone. And I didn’t like what I saw. The battery life and the accuracy of the touchscreen were awful. The camera and external speaker were pretty poor - I had a handsfree call with another HTC Desire owner and we couldn’t understand each other at all. So it wasn’t just my phone.

After a few more days I found myself wistfully thinking about my old phone. The one that just made calls and took a few pictures. The one that didn’t need to be recharged every day. The one that didn’t always seem to be telling me something. (So-and-so has updated their profile!) With only a few days to go before my holiday I decided to send it back and I replaced it with a standard issue Sony Ericsson w995.

The whole episode taught me a lot about myself and mobile connectivity.

Despite being someone who likes to be connected, who spends money on the latest tech, who really likes mobile computing, I prefer some things to be simple. Phones especially.

Its nothing to do with Android itself. I think the result would have been the same with an iPhone. or maybe even a Blackberry. And it’s not because I’m stuck on the SonyEricsson platform. I quite like Nokia phones too.

It’s one of the reasons why I didn’t get an iPad 3GS. I simply don’t need to be that connected anymore. My phone, which is the most mobile device I have, needs to do one thing really, really well - make calls. All the other stuff was getting in the way of that (not to mention running the battery down).

I also realised that one of the reasons I like both my iPod touch and the iPad (and my palm pilot back in the day) is that they are *not* phones. I think that making calls and handling mobile data are not as similar tasks as the tech companies would have us believe. At least, not the way we (or maybe just I) prefer to do it.

According to my phone provider I was the first person they knew of to return the HTC Desire. They were so amazed they wondered if I had a faulty handset. No, I assured them, there was nothing wrong with my handset. They asked me if I thought I’d be interested in an iPhone. I laughed and politely declined. For one thing I’m not buying a phone which costs as much as the iPad. I’d rather buy another iPad.

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