Exxodium

On the Activision-wants-Harmonix keruffle

2010-03-02T07:23:26Z

Via Kotaku, there's been some talk recently about Activision's CEO admitting he screwed up by not going after Harmonix, but rather, RedOctane.

Disclosure

I've played GH1 and 2, and definitely 3 and World Tour. I own Rock Band 1 and 2, and planned on getting The Beatles edition, but never went through with it.

Really, it's tough for me to even comprehend why Harmonix would allow themselves to be purchased by Activision.

Look at the GH series. 1 and 2 were awesome games. Good note charts and everything. Then, you take a look at GH3, and you see where Activision completely dropped the ball. Note charts are insanely difficult with notes added JUST FOR DIFFICULTY, and the whole game, top to bottom, feels rushed and incomplete.

Whereas, you look at Rock Band and see a quality game with good tracks and great notecharts. RB2 bumped the difficulty a few notches but never lost the quality of the RB series.

Then when you look at GH: World Tour, all you see is a rushed "me-too" game just to bring itself up to parity with Rock Band.

But now...

That all takes a backseat to what Activision would do if they got their hands on the RB series.

Do you not see what they're doing to the GH series? We have Guitar Hero 5 now. Band Hero. Guitar Hero Aerosmith, Metallica, and Van Halen. Guitar Hero Smash Hits. And now, DJ Hero.

The entire fucking franchise is being exploited as a cash in, unlike RB, which every release is a quality release.

It's sad to watch, and it'd be worse if GH's only competitor fell to the same fate.

Activision doesn't know what they're doing with the franchise.

And THAT'S what killed GH.

Reshuffle

2010-01-29T09:45:55Z

I think I'm going to reshuffle my computers so that I can fit the iBook G4 somewhere.

Outer Heaven (the MBP) will be my do-all machine, with Windows7/OS X Snow Leopard. Anything demanding? This one will take it.

Yggdrasil (iBook) will take over for the netbook for things like note taking in classes. I tried using my huge MBP for note taking in class today, and it was not the best experience.

The Eee PC (which doesn't have a name yet) will probably be a small, linux-based server. Or an IceChat Bot server. Whatever I feel like.

Whereas, my phone (Which I've named Harvestar) will be doing data duties on college campus, since their network is so overloaded it's impossible to use. (The multimedia lab is the only exception.)

The iPad

2010-01-28T08:27:52Z

I obviously don't have one, and I've never used one, and I wasn't at Apple's event today. But I do have a few thoughts about the device.

For one: If it could do text messaging, this would be my device. I'd be all over it. You know why? Because that's all I did with my iPhone and all I do with my Tilt2. Text messaging and internet. I'm not a phone person, so that $40 on a voice plan is wasted money for me. But it doesn't. So there's one reason why I wouldn't get it.

Two: It fills a niche that not many people have. I could see it standing in for a massive laptop like a MacBook Pro on college trips and such, but some people (me included) have smaller computers up to the task. I have an iBook G4 (12 inch for the win) and an ASUS Eee PC.

Why do I compare small laptops to the iPad? Because it looks like you have to rest the iPad against something to even consider using it's onscreen keyboard. Like maybe a table, or your leg.

If you're going to have to rest this thing on something, why not make it a laptop instead of a touchscreen slate of glass? (And yes, I do know there exists a physical keyboard attachment. But for the sake of portability, I'm going to guess you wouldn't carry it with you.)

It boggles my mind.

But I think these questions will be answered once iPads start trickling into users' hands.

What I use

2010-01-24T00:29:02Z

I was reading some of The Setup, and I figure I'd add my own in. (I know I'm not really "leet" enough to get my own page there. But it's still fun to go over what I own and use to get through the day.)

So here it is: What I use to get through the day.

What hardware do you use? Currently, I use as my main machine a 2.4GHz 15'' MacBook Pro. It's got 2GB of RAM and a 500GB Hitachi drive spinning at 5400RPM. I've also got a 500GB OWC Mercury Elite Aluminum external HDD for my backups. When I'm at my desk, I use an Apple keyboard (full sized, aluminum) and a Logitech wireless mouse. (unsure of what model.)

Also, when I need to pack lightly and I don't have much room in my bag, I'll take along my Asus Eee PC 1005HAB. It has a 160GB HDD and 2GB of RAM. It's a capable machine for web tasks and light gaming. (Starcraft, etc.)

And when I'm too lazy to reboot into Windows 7 on my MacBook Pro, I've got an old HP laptop that I occasionally use to do something that requires Windows.

As for phones: I had an iPhone 3GS 32GB that met an untimely fate. I now use a Touch Pro2 (AT&T) and a Droid (Verizon).

For all the other misc. hardware I use, I have a Canon PowerShot G11 for use as my primary camera, and a PowerShot SD1100 for use as my backup camera or when I need to pack light.

And lastly, a 2G iPod touch (16GB) for music.

What software do you use?

I use Aperture for everything having to do with photos, and maybe Photoshop CS3 for the tasks that Aperture cannot do.

For web browsing, I use Safari, sometimes Firefox. Safari is just blistering fast and renders everything smoothly. Firefox, not so much.

For chat and stuff, I use iChat for AIM, and Colloquy for IRC.

For basic text editing, I use TextEdit. For anything more advanced, I prefer TextWrangler.

For syncing some music with my phone, I use DoubleTwist. For just listening to music, iTunes does fine for me.

I also use FileZilla for any FTP stuff.

The Nexus One

2010-01-06T04:26:38Z

These are my preliminary thoughts. I obviously was not at the press event today, and I don't have a Nexus One. (But I did load Android 2.1 onto my Droid for a little bit.)

- Seriously? No multi-touch? For a phone whose ONLY input method is the virtual keyboard, this is a make-or-break question! And this would put the Nexus One clearly in the break section. I type so fast on the iPhone that it chokes up. I'd imagine typing at half that speed would break things on the Nexus One.

- For being HTC-built, MicroUSB and 3.5mm headphone jacks are welcome additions.

- The Music app gets a lot less credit than it deserves. Google deep sixed that annoying Music "home" page where you had to tap Songs, Artists, etc. Now you get an artist listing from the outset, with the four primary library buttons AT THE TOP. Kind of like an inverse iPod touch. Sadly, the Now Playing screen got NOTHING at all. What I'd at least like to see is a button that takes you back to Artists, or somesuch. Having to do a Menu > Library gets infuriating.

- Question: Will the unlocked version have CDMA radios? a la BlackBerry Storm? (CDMA + GSM in the same device)

- It does more than an iPhone, and it's thinner. Apple just got told.

- Live wallpapers are just a waste of CPU cycles.

- Flash 10.1? Shoot me. I'd rather not get BLINKING FUCKING ADS while browsing on my phone.

Verizon finally gets it right...Kind of.

2010-01-05T06:03:55Z

(This will be the last post about the infamous Droid battery door issue. Promise.)

After a successful resolution from the Verizon store in Walnut Creek, I was satisfied with the state of my Droid. The battery door stayed in place, and would hang on for the life of it.

Sadly, that state of euphoria didn't last long at all, as my Droid began having severe network issues, and the door began falling off the back again. This was on Christmas day. I was also at my girlfriend's for Christmas.

I pick up my Droid and dial up Verizon, who amazingly is open for Christmas, and I get a rep who actually seems like he's going to help me out. I describe what I've done to him, including re-actviating my phone, updating my roaming settings, etc.

Having seen all the notes on my account, he just instantly relents and sends me a new phone. I interrupt him and tell him he needs a different address to send it to, since my shipping address is different from my billing address. No problem, it'll all be fine.

That is, until I get two shipping notifications in my inbox. Maybe they're just sending me something to compensate for the problems.

That is, until I realized that they sent me TWO Droids. One to my billing address, and one to my shipping address. How did I know? I went to the FedEx shipping center in Pacheco, CA to grab the one package that I wasn't home for.

Unboxed it in the car, and that was one of the Droids. Then I went to the PO Box where my billing address is to retrieve the package sitting there. Unboxed that, too, and it was another Droid.

I dialed up Verizon to make sure they wern't about to charge me for this extra phone. The guy on the other end took down the MEID HEX of the extra Droid and noted that I was going to return that one.

I let my girlfriend pick the one I should take before that, though, and she ended up siding with a good one. The battery door hangs on for dear life, actually lines up with the casing, and doesn't royally fuck up software-wise like my other Droid did.

Now, to just take both of these FedEx packages back to a FedEx store...

----

Endnote: I suppose things like this would be okay if Verizon didn't try to act like the gatekeeper for phone support, or drop the ball so damned frequently.

It really sucks that Verizon doesn't have replacement phone SKUs at the retail stores, because if your phone is seriously hosed and you need a replacement *right now*, you're out of luck. All they have are retail SKUs, which CANNOT be used for replacing phones.

In contrast to Apple Stores (yeah, I'm going to compare the Droid to the iPhone, because Verizon markets the Droid as an iPhone killer), where Apple has loads of bare iPhones for replacement purposes.

Hell, even MetroPCS (a local, regional carrier with GREAT customer service) acts as the gatekeeper for phone support *and* manages to do it right. (They have replacement phone SKUs in store.)

Maybe I'm just being a nitpicky bitch because of the excellent service that Apple showed me while I was using an iPhone 3GS.

It Must be Serious

2010-01-03T04:04:29Z

At least right now, if you go to Verizon's website and look into the Motorola Droid (not the Droid Eris), you'll find that the battery door for the Droid is being listed for the nice, low price of Free.

I'm not joking.

Now list the Droid as free and I think you'll have a solution, Verizon!

Temporary Defeat (Updated)

2009-12-29T10:21:13Z

The whole MacBook Pro and the broken audio thing finally just drained me, so I threw in the towel and took it into a Genius Bar to have them take a crack at it.

Simply put, I was defeated before the battle even began.

I got to the Apple Store about 5:30 PM, 45 minutes before my appointment. Since I have the song that the audio issue is most noticeable on uploaded to my webserver, I could just pull it down to any of the store computers and replay it.

I got on one of the 15" MacBook Pro's, pointed it at my webserver, and played the song. I plugged my iPhone earbuds in.

And, holy shit! The computers were defective! The store computers were defective! I tried it with a current-gen MacBook, and an iMac. Both had the same problem! This meant it had to be a 10.6 problem.

At that point, I was due up at the Genius Bar, and I already know this was probably outside their scope of support. I knew defeat when I saw it.

The guy was really kind about things, though. He let me do whatever I needed to reproduce the problem. I plugged in my external drive and booted Snow Leopard. He got out some really high-grade Bose headphones, which worked flawlessly. Even cranking the frequency to 96000 Hz didn't make the problem appear with the Bose 'phones.

So I let him listen to the song with my earbuds. And he noticed right away.

He got me a replacement set of Apple 'buds, then I left.

Sure enough, when I got home, rebooted into Snow Leopard, and tried the audio again, the pulsating started right back up with the Apple earbuds.

I...I don't even know where the problem could lie at this point.

There's three different scenarios that could be at play here:

1. The pulsating issue is still there with the Bose headphones, but the noise canceling tech might be making the pulsating much less noticeable.

2. It's totally a driver issue with 10.6.

3. It could be the hardware. Either in the headphone jack or the 'buds themselves.

To test out #3, I'm going to buy a throwaway pair of earbuds tomorrow to see if the pulsating happens again.

#2 is already proved by rebooting into 10.5.5/Windows 7.

#1 is definitely plausible at this point, but that will be proved by testing #3.

If anyone reading this has anything they can chip in to help, I'd greatly appreciate it. Assuming that the problem lies completely in 10.6, I'll be phoning AppleCare *and* filing a bug report with Apple.

UPDATE:

I got some Panasonic Digital Monitor cans for about $30 from Fry's. These are the kind that seal over your ears so you can't really hear anything other than the music. I tried replicating the problem with these and it didn't seem to reappear. (And these do NOT have noise canceling tech)

But, this issue happened with the HTC earbuds I tried, and my Apple earbuds.

I'm beginning to believe this might just be an issue with earbuds. I'll have to wait until my next paycheck, then I'll buy a cheap pair of earbuds and re-test.

On AT&T's customer service

2009-12-25T08:34:35Z

Amid all the criticism for AT&T, I feel I must point out a point of redemption for them. Especially so in the face of the way Verizon has been treating me lately (like shit).

Sometimes, their customer service rocks socks.

In Mid 2008, I suffered a pretty bad break up with my ex girlfriend. One thing I didn't realize was that she decided to get revenge on me by racking up a $500 phone bill because I didn't shut off her phone soon enough.

After trying to get her to pay (and failing), I had to break down and accept the fact that I'd be responsible for paying this massive bill.

By myself.

I call into AT&T's customer service, and I get a girl named Heather. And I tell her the full story; I had a breakup, my ex decided to screw me up by racking up a load of data charges. I asked if there were a way I could do a payment plan for the phone bill.

(Trying to recall this from memory here) "That's awesome. It's not your fault, yet you're ready to take responsibility for someone else's actions on your account." She said. "I've been in your situation before, and I can totally understand how you feel. I'll apply a two-fifty credit to your account. I hope that helps you out."

Me: "Two dollars and fifty cents?"

CSR: "Nope, two-hundred and fifty dollars"

Me: *jaw hitting floor*

I almost couldn't believe this. I mean, she totally didn't have to do what she did. Yet, she went above and beyond to make my shit day even better.

Really, it's things like that that will give you loyal customers, customers who would die for you.

It's just sad AT&T's upper management seems to be staffed by idiots.

The Mystifying MacBook Pro Problem

2009-12-25T07:47:19Z

This one's got a long history. Bear with me.

In January 2009, I bought a new MacBook Pro to replace the nearly-one-year-old MacBook I had. The white MacBook I had suffered from a myriad of issues, mostly due to crappy case construction. Having played with the unibody MacBook Pro's at an Apple Store, I decided to get rid of the MacBook.

I needed this computer for college, so I got it dual-booting Mac OS X and Windows Vista. Got everything completely set up and running.

That's when, having everything done and ready to go, I decided to listen to music.

I was listening through my iPhone's earbuds, and my roommate left a few minutes after. At this point, I decided to listen to the totally awesome speakers that come on the MacBook Pro.

Except, when I pulled the plug, there was nothing but silence. And the volume controls didn't work at all. And there was red light coming from the headphone jack. A quick trip to System Preferences revealed that somehow, my computer was stuck on Digital Out.

Now, this was a known issue in the older MacBook Pros, but I had never seen it on the new unibody MBP's. So, I tried every arcane fix that worked for the other MBP's. Nothing worked. Sensing defeat, I finally just packed up the MBP in it's box and exchanged it on the recommendation of AppleCare.

I had to leave town with my (then) girlfriend, so I took it with me, unboxed it at her house, and set to work on it. Once again, I plugged my iPhone earbuds into the computer and listened to music. Once I pulled them out to listen to music through the speakers...

BOOM. Dead. Again. Red light shining bright through the jack, and the computer is jammed into digital out again.

Naturally, I am pissed. I call up AppleCare again, and explain myself. The kind guy on the other end concludes with a "well, I think you pretty much know what you're doing here, so what would you say would be a good solution?"

I just requested to get another exchange, but at a different Apple Store, because the batch at the store I purchased my MBP from might be defective. He added a note, and sent me to the Apple Store San Francisco.

I got there, they tried to revive my computer, and upon failing, swapped it out with another MBP. This time, I plugged and unplugged my iPhone earbuds into the MBP to make sure it didn't break again.

It didn't. And it still hasn't. Sort of.

Fast forward to about a month ago, in which I install 10.6 on my MacBook Pro. From this point on, the sound card seems to be making this weird pulsating noise in the background of every quiet song that I play. Here's the problem in action. And it was tested against multiple devices.

I learned to deal with it for a while, but it's beginning to get on my nerves. So I set out to fix this issue.

Firstly, the diagnosis reveals that this problem only occurs with headphones. I tried to hook the headphone jack to my Eee PC's Line In jack, and while the sound makes it across clearly, the pulsating is not present. Also, bumping the frequency to 90,000KHz in Audio MIDI Setup made the problem way worse. And also very documentable.

As for actually fixing the problem: My first shot was to reboot my MBP in Windows 7 and play the same song. And it played, no pulsating whatsoever. Screwing with every setting I could find didn't make things worse, either.

Okay, so this has to be a driver issue of some sort. Only...you can't install/reinstall drivers in Mac OS X!

Remembering OS X basic troubleshooting steps, I tried playing the same song in a different account. Problem persisted. So obviously, something is screwed up in 10.6.2.

Getting on the extreme side of things, I installed 10.5.5 to my external OWC drive. With a stock 10.5.5 install, I played the file...and, holy shit! No pulsating!

I began moving all my critical stuff from my MBP's drive to the external drive. Once everything was migrated and in place, I used SuperDuper to copy everything back over to the MBP's hard drive. Rebooted it, and everything was still fine.

Pushing my luck a bit, I let my computer update to 10.5.8, but I had it leave QuickTime and iTunes alone.

And, surprise surprise, the audio was once again broken when I tested it under 10.5.8.

I reformatted my MBP's drive and restored everything from the external disk, which still had 10.5.5.

Everything works great.

And I'm not sure I'll ever touch Software Update. At least, not until this issue is fixed.

--------

PS: If anyone wants to have a crack at diagnosing my problem, here's my system info (1MB file). I can grab console logs and reboot into 10.6.0 to get a profile there, too.

Site update: Comments on

2009-12-22T08:26:27Z

Having dealt with spam in the past, I decided to leave comments to a registration-only basis. I have now decided to open them up to anyone with an email address.

Also accepted are more OpenID-supported providers, such a Google accounts and Wordpress.com accounts.

Have at it. I'll leave them open for a week and then decide if I want to keep them on or not.

The Droid 2.0.1 update

2009-12-22T07:12:37Z

A write up on this I promised, and a write up on this you shall get. An enumeration of things that I notice are different since applying the Droid 2.0.1 update, and my commentary.

The Lockscreen has been changed: The slide to unlock/silence has been given a graphical redesign, and the clock is now in a different typeface. The typeface that's used in the Android Market app on 1.6 and later.

The home screen lag is gone: It'll still lag heavily if you go overboard on widgets, but for the most part, it's much faster.

The camera issue is fixed: But this was known for quite a long time.

Battery life, at least on my Droid, appears to be significantly worse.

That Droid Picture

2009-12-21T08:10:34Z

Apparently my phone became somewhat famous over the last week :D

It popped up on Daring Fireball (I'll be honest, I sent John the link to my Flickr photo after seeing his entry in the linked list about the Droid battery covers), then on Gizmodo, then on Android Central and PocketNow. Also managed to make it on to 9to5 Mac (Holy shit).

Here's the full story.

My launch Droid ended up suffering from the big battery door problem that has plagued a LOT of Droids. My Droid's door wasn't popping off, but rather it would partially come loose and not line up with the rest of the case. I bought the Droid hardcase to cover it up, but it made the phone sliding mechanism damned near impossible to operate.

Getting fed up, I finally took it into the Verizon store in downtown Pleasant Hill, CA.

I was seen by a tech (whose name I will not disclose) who looked at the back of my phone, and began looking at me with a "Well, what do you expect *me* to do about it?" look.

At this time, another rep walked up and tried to scotch-tape the battery door down. I intervened and said "Okay, I don't want anything unsightly on my phone."

So the tech who was serving me had another enterprising idea: The Verizon Band-Aid.

He pulled out this sticker from his wallet, and it had this grippy material on it. He applied it to my phone, and said that it should hold the phone together. He acted like I should be thankful that he was giving me this sticker.

I had also brought up my Droid's horrid battery life since the 2.0.1 update. They factory-reset my Droid on the spot (which did nothing).

Whatev.

My girlfriend was being seen at the same time for her pretty-damned-defective enV Touch (Who had a failed proximity sensor, shit battery life, even with the extended battery, and it would randomly shut down and/or lose service.) They even refused her service, making up crappy excuses to refuse her service. They claimed that makeup can damage the proximity sensor, which is bullshit simply because 1. It's under a sheet of plastic and it's sealed tight, and 2. My girlfriend doesn't wear makeup.

Knowing we were pretty much up against a brick wall here, we took our phones and left. I got home, whipped out my Canon G11, took a few photos of the absurd "solution" Verizon gave me, and put them up on Flickr. I decided to link John Gruber to them, since he had wrote about the Droid's battery door issues on the Linked List before.

The Flickr photo showed up on the Linked List, and from there, it spread everywhere.

But, enough of that.

Today, I went back to the Verizon store. Not the same one, mind you, but the one in downtown Walnut Creek.

The wait time was horrible, and I honestly got ready to argue my way out of a contract and go running back to good 'ol AT&T, but, amazingly, Verizon did make right what they did wrong.

The kind lady looked at my girlfriend's phone, was pretty sure it was a lemon, and ordered up a replacement immediately. Pretty damned nice, I say.

Then she looked at my phone. The look on her face was beyond priceless. She demanded to know who thought it was a good idea to slap a sticker on the back of my phone. I explained it was the Pleasant Hill store's solution, not mine.

She peeled the stickers right off, went to the back, and got a new, pristine battery door, which clicked right into place, and thankfully, hasn't come off yet.

And for my troubles, she gave me a free battery.

So, thanks to Verizon's actions, I won't be leaving them. I was almost ready to, because I don't feel like sticking with a carrier that expects me to do two years without really backing their phones (which is something I *really* like about the iPhone).

Or maybe I should have just signed a one year contract.

The Droid 2.0.1 update (Placeholder)

2009-12-10T09:47:18Z

Time's kind of tight right now, so I can't write the article right this second. But I do want to say that I did get the 2.0.1 update on my Droid (However, I manually updated it. Waiting is for losers. I waited about a week before my G1 would update to 1.6 out of the box. And it was bad, because it was running RC29. But enough about that.) and I'm going through everything.

The two major things that I want to get out of the way are that the lock screen was revamped, and the clock is in a different typeface now. Not only that, but the Home Screen lag HAS BEEN FIXED. It's buttery smooth now, as it should be.

The other changes I'll get around to when I can. Sorry!

The Quest for a great phone

2009-11-14T16:22:07Z

What began with a destroyed iPhone 3GS and ended with a Motorola Droid and involved three carrier switches has finally, finally come to an end. I'll call this: The quest for an awesome phone.

Part I: In which AT&T blows it, big time

So it begins with me being pretty happy with my iPhone 3GS. There were some things wrong with it, but it had just been in the Apple Store to be worked on. As of that moment, it was all fine besides the GPS going nuts every so often.

I was at the gas station getting gas, in which my mom decided to run her credit card at the gas station to give me a fill-up on her. I was talking with her, screwing with my iPhone while doing so. When I was finished filling the car, I took off, not knowing the iPhone was still on top of the car. Of course, it fell off, and by the time I was able to get back to it and rescue it, it had already been ran over.

The Incase Slider Case clearly did a great job defending the rest of the iPhone, though--the back of the phone was completely pristine, and the case was completely cracked, scratched and broken.

I figured I'd just go run to an AT&T store and see what they could do for me. I was told that if I had bought AppleCare, then I could buy a new phone for $400. Otherwise? $700.

Checking that with Apple, they said that the AT&T rep I talked to is full of it, since AppleCare covers manufacturer defects, not accidental damage. Though the repairs would only be $200 if the screen was broken and that was it. (Sadly, more than the screen was broken.)

"Fine," I thought, "I'll just use the upgrade on one of my old lines to get a new phone." Hearing things about the Samsung Impression (and it's data/text rates being cheaper than a smartphone), I decided to go for it.

Only between now and the last time I checked my upgrade status on my lines, AT&T renovated their systems, or so it seems, and that the line that *was* eligible for upgrade was now only eligible in January 2010. I was pissed, but needed a phone, so I just threw down full retail price for the phone. (It was almost $400.)

I ended up returning the phone the next day, only because of the stupid resistive touchscreen, and the interface was utter shit. The keyboard also dropped random characters.

Tiring of AT&T's antics, I canned the line and went to T-Mobile, whom I also had an account with.

Part II: T-Mobile saves the day (then fails)

Going to T-Mobile, the awesomeness of their customer service shines through the minute I talk to a rep. Even though I have an iPhone 3GS, they'll make an insurance claim against my account, allowing me to get a phone at contract price.

Being kind of daring, I choose the HTC Touch Pro2. Any phone of mine *will* live and die by it's keyboard. And the TP2's keyboard...I can't even begin to describe it. It's like an orgasm for your fingers. It's *that* good.

Sadly, Windows Mobile wasn't up to snuff. I was running WinMo 6.1 on it, but it was having it's own little issues, like the phone just suddenly unlocking randomly in my pocket.

I eventually figured out how to fix it, but the phone would automatically unlock whenever an SMS came in, and no amount of tweaking would fix this. Manually locking the phone from the Applications menu would prevent it from completely unlocking, but it would activate the screen and keep it on, which in turn would drain the battery.

Giving up on that, I flashed a WinMo 6.5 ROM to the TP2, and used the WVGA Tweak tool to set it to NOT unlock unless I manually unlock it via the power key.

This worked for about 3 days. Then, all of the sudden, EVERY KEY would unlock the phone. Even the rear mute key would cause the phone to completely unlock.

Worst of all, there wasn't a way to fix this, either.

Just wanting to give up and try another phone, I reboxed the phone and returned it, this time choosing another G1. I figure that I've already dealt with a G1 before and liked it, right?

Wrong.

This one was particularly bad. For starters, the touchscreen was so hosed it might as well not even be there, and as was the case with the previous G1 I had, battery life was nigh unworkable.

The thing lasted two weeks before I got swayed by the Droid. It looked like my dream phone. I boxed the G1 and returned it. (And canceled.)

This all isn't to say T-Mobile is a bad service; their customer support is top-notch and they took *really* good care of me. But I just has extremely bad luck with them.

Part III: The Switch to Verizon

So, the Droid. Verizon's attempt at "being open". I figure I'll give 'em a chance, even though I hate them, with all the stupid crap they've pulled in the past.

Sadly, this was late October that I made this decision, and I had no phone to use. So I had to buy a temporary Verizon phone to use until the Droid came around. I settled on the enV3, since it was free at Best Buy Mobile.

(I believe this deserves an elaboration: If you're buying Verizon crap, go with BB Mobile or some other retailer with a generous exchange policy. Verizon only allows you ONE phone exchange in their own stores, and they always make you do rebates. Retailers like Costco and BB Mobile do the rebates instantly. Verizon really nails you with the rebates.)

Midway through my stint with the enV3 (it was actually decent for a free phone), I figured that I might not be able to afford the lofty data plans for the Droid. So I exchanged for an enV Touch, which qualified as a dumbphone and didn't need an expensive data plan.

Problem is, these things don't seem to age well. My girlfriend's Touch already had a dead proximity sensor and the battery was already heading south (And this phone was only 3 months old), and my phone had a failing W key. Still well short of the Droid launch, I swapped out to a Storm2.

Which I was happy with.

Until I went to eat at Buckhorn Grill at Walnut Creek on the Droid's launch day. There was a Verizon store right next to it, so I ran into the Verizon store to play with a Droid.

I was impressed, and the Storm2 in my back pocket suddenly felt like a joke. The Storm2 had it's own issues, and up until the Droid, I was willing to put up with them.

I walked into a Verizon store that night and left with a Droid.

And I've been happy with the purchase ever since.

The only real issue I take with the phone is the keyboard. It's workable, but it's far short from anything great.

Just give me a Droid with a TP2 keyboard.

I'd buy a million of those.