LaShandar D. Cook ||||

Nightmare Phone

After nearly 4 months of denial, I finally have to admit that this phone is a total and complete piece of crap.

Android OS is still interesting, though not nearly as impressive as Palm’s WebOS, but the primary shortcoming is the package. This phone is completely worthless. The internet NEVER works reliably, except for email and GPS (and that can be iffy and pretty dang slow too). A few times I’ve managed to stream music, a few times I’ve managed to watch a low-quality video, but mostly I’ve just been disappointed, if not outright disgusted.

I’ve almost smashed this phone 3 or 4 times in just the past week. Not only due to the abysmal internet but also because I randomly find the phone switched to airplane mode! I am not able to “correct” these problems until rebooting, and even then that doesn’t always work. And pretty much always, it only works if I don’t do ANYTHING beyond nothing. I can text, I can check email, and if I only do those few things, I can PROBABLY make and receive phone calls.

What had me fooled was the fact that the phone is normally connected to wifi at home and I guess I text and talk enough to keep my signal strong enough not to drop (apparently from lack of use…and I’m talking minutes not hours). I’ve rarely tried to do more than the minimum, away from home, because I rarely have time; though I have tried to show my nieces and nephews videos and failed miserably (which is why I download and save videos now, but I shouldn’t have to since I supposedly have 3G service).

I’m trying to stay hopeful, since 2.1 is supposedly coming “soon” and should fix these problems, but I waited a whole month to install the so-called software upgrade (that took me all of 3 minutes yet none of the paid technicians at the local Sprint stores knew how to do it…), but the update obviously didn’t improve SHAT! Ok, it did eliminate the lag with the keyboard (it can keep up with me now) and that stupid emergency button no longer automatically calls the police just because your finger comes within millimeters, but it didn’t fix anything essential! I definitely need to stay OUT of airplane mode and I’d appreciate my internet working reliably.

The last straw came today since I’ve been home sick but can’t do SHAT for fear of my stupid phone switching to airplane mode! And so what if I’ve slept most of the day. I don’t hardly like TV and I ran out of good books.