Phonage

For nearly 3 months now I’ve been sans cell phone. I’ve actually been torn between enjoying being completely “off the grid” and being able to call people in a pinch. Well, it couldn’t last forever and now with my wife’s AT&T contract expired, we’re free to get away from the great devil phone company and get us both phones at a company that doesn’t suck the souls out of it’s customers.

That would be T-mobile. Sure, they’re not 100% perfect, but I’ve never dropped a call in the Houston area on a T-mobile phone. AT&T on the other hand, drops calls for my wife nearly every day.

Now my biggest hurdle is the phone itself. It seems that, following a complete removal from the T-mobile website and store fronts, my phone of choice, the Motorola KRZR K1, is either discontinued or being replaced with something else. I’m actually kind of upset about this. It was the perfect phone. It was the single most hackable piece of technology I had ever used up until recently when I got my DS. It was great. You could put just about any java game or app on there, load it up with MP3s as ring tones, all sorts of stuff, all with minimal effort. I’ll be very disappointed if there’s no equivalent to replace it.

That brings me to the lack of suitable other choices. There’s really only three that I’d consider in my price range. From Motorola, the W490 and the ROKR and the Samsung Katalyst. I used to really like Nokia phones, but the Nokia selection that’s available to T-mobile is really kinda weak. The Nokia 6263 is really the only thing I’d consider from that camp, and that’s more of a last resort sort of option. Actually, so is the Katalyst. Crackberries are right out. Not even going down that road.

That leaves me with a phone that’s a step below the phone I want, or essentially the same phone only in a form factor I don’t like. Awesome choices huh?

Then of course, there’s stories like this here and here. 16 new phones for T-Mobile coming in July/August. Crap. Now what do I do? Wait another month? Granted, nearly half of the announced new phones are Nokia and most of those are “budget” phones that will probably replace the current “free” phones that come with new plans, but still. Point is that new phones are landing this month and I’d be pretty pissed if I got a phone tomorrow only to find out that it’s discontinued and replaced with something else by Friday.

I hate phones. Can’t we just go back to parchment paper and carrier pigeons?