Finally Getting Smart

A little over two years ago I decided that I could no longer stand to be without some form of mobile internet access. What I most wanted was the ability to check the MBTA web site for information about delays, and the ability to access my email while away from home or work.

At the time Verizon did not offer any devices that were of interest to me, but I didn't want to switch carriers, so I looked into getting a second device. I found that it was possible to get a BlackBerry with only internet service on AT&T, and they were selling refurbished devices through their web site for only $30. It wasn't the simplest or most elegant solution (the BlackBerry web browser is woeful compared to its competitors), but it gave me what I most wanted and needed at the time.

Except... except for AT&T's notoriously bad service. Roughly 40% of the time I needed to go online to get some info, I could not connect to the data network. Sometimes I could resolve the issue by shutting down the BlackBerry and restarting it, but that was a cumbersome and ridiculous workaround. I was paying $30 a month for service that I often could not make use of.

The smart thing probably would have been to just ditch the service altogether and pay the early termination penalty (Verizon finally came out with its own version of the same device about six months after I'd gotten mine), but I felt nagged by the idea that I would end up stuck without web access (or even theoretically possible web access) in a situation when it was needed. And I had been able to make use of a dedicated Google Maps program for the device on several occasions when the Mrs. and I were driving in an unfamiliar place, so I kept the thing, using it only when it was really necessary.

My contract ended right before Christmas, and I canceled it immediately, because by then I knew that Verizon was launching its version of the Palm Pre in January. The Pre originally launched last June on Sprint, and it had been widely assumed that a Verizon version would be forthcoming. Then Verizon announced the official launch date, January 25th--the day we were flying home from our trip to California.

Monday is an odd day to launch such a device; usually smartphones go on sale on a Saturday to generate buzz and draw out the diehard early adopters. I griped out loud to anyone within earshot that if Verizon wanted to launch the Pre on a Monday, why not do it on the 18th, which was a holiday, so people like me could go get it, and that way I would have had it in time for our trip. But no one from Verizon consulted me about the timing of the launch.

On the morning of the 25th, we had coffee in downtown Santa Cruz before making the drive across the mountains and up the peninsula to the San Francisco airport. Across the street was a strip mall with, among other things, a Trader Joe's and a Verizon store. I mused out loud to the Mrs. that I could probably just go across the street and get the phone. She shrewdly pointed out that if I did that, I would have to pay the much higher California state sales tax, and on the full pre-rebate amount. I thought, what's a few bucks, but then I decided it was probably easier to just wait and deal with it after we got home. I think if we'd been planning to come home on Tuesday, I would have gone ahead and gotten it out there on Monday.

The next day, back at work, I checked the Verizon web site and was reminded of something I'd forgotten since my previous phone upgrade: when you order through their site (instead of going to a store and getting the phone in person), any applicable rebates are deducted from the transaction immediately, saving the trouble of collecting the bar code from the package and filling out the forms and mailing them and waiting six to eight weeks for a check, hoping you didn't make a mistake (believe it or not, rebate processes are designed to trip people up, or be so onerous that people won't bother submitting them at all).

Phones ordered through the web site are also shipped overnight for free, so if you can delay your gratification just a little longer (not always easy for someone like me) it's a pretty good deal. The phone came the next day by 11:30 AM, and all I had to do was call a number to activate the device on my line.

The Pre is a nifty little device. It's smaller than an iPhone (which means it will fit in my pocket comfortably) with rounded corners and edges. It looks like a glossy black stone of some sort. It has a physical keyboard, which was a requirement for me, and a removable battery, which was not crucial but is still nice. It has a touch-screen interface, like many other such devices now do, that is intuitive and easy to learn. Palm's app store has nowhere near the selection of Apple's, but it's growing, and apps are less important to me right now than reliable internet access.

One other thing that's really cool is an optional charging device called Touchstone. The Pre comes with a conventional wall-plug charger, an impressively tiny cylinder (about 1.5 inches high by 1 inch diameter) with flip-out prongs and a USB cord, so you have the option to charge the phone through a computer's USB port. But if you plug the cord into the Touchstone instead of the Pre itself, you can then charge the Pre just by laying it on the Touchstone: there are tiny magnets in the phone's back that hold it in place, and electrical contacts that conduct the charge. So you can leave the Touchstone on a desk or table and park your Pre on it each night. (I bought my Touchstone through Amazon and paid much less than what Palm or Verizon charge for it.)

As you might figure, I'm pretty excited about my new toy, and I'm happy to have finally entered my own personal Smartphone Era. I don't plan to bore you with any further talk of it, unless anything particularly good or bad happens. But this does mean that it should be much easier for me to post while I'm traveling, since now I don't need access to a computer. Lucky you...