My attempt to buy the cell phone that I wanted, with the features that I wanted, with cellular signal coverage I could live with is officially over for now. I ended up buying nothing, and I have to admit that I am a little miffed about it. The bottom line is that nobody could offer the complete package that I wanted and nobody seemed to care or try, with one exception.
Now remember that I want a high-end phone with very good Internet and email capabilities. Most phones are acceptable email processors now, but getting the "real" Internet is another story.
Besides the iPhone, which I eliminated early on because of numerous issues and because AT&T's EDGE data network is very slow, I focused in on phones from two manufacturers - Blackberry and HTC. Most people have heard of Blackberry and they are very popular - they do an excellent job at email, and have basic Internet browsing capability. HTC makes cool high-end PDA-type phones with slide out keyboards. I would also prefer a phone that uses the Windows Mobile operating system, so I can replace two units (my cell phone and my pocket PC) with one. Both AT&T and Sprint carried HTC phones, but of course there would still be the performance issue with AT&T.
My current carrier is Alltel. Score high marks for network coverage - they advertise themselves as the nation's largest carrier. I have been with Alltel for many years and have little to fault. But one issue with Alltel is that they never carry the latest high-end phones. They are still selling series 8700 Blackberrys when the 8800 series has been out for quite a while. Their only HTC offering is literally years old. We also unfortunately don't have a very local Alltel store - Wilmington or Shallotte are the nearest.
So I wandered over to US Cellular in Southport - very nice people, and concerned about my problem. US Cellular looks to have very good coverage here in Brunswick County, and where US Cellular towers don't cover, they use Verizon. But again, as with Alltel, US Cellular doesn't offer the newer phones and had no HTC offering at all.
The local AT&T store was also very helpful. They actually loaned me two nice phones - a Samsung Blackjack and an AT&T 8525 (which is the HTC Hermes). I loved both phones, although the 8525 was much better at displaying web pages than the Blackjack. But they were unable to confirm any plan to upgrade the local AT&T EDGE data network. Interestingly, both phones support full 3G and can handle the AT&T higher speed HSPDA network - it's just not available here.
Sprint locally, however, was less than helpful. Their primary business seems to be voice cell phones and the push-to-talk Nextel crowd, but they knew little about the Internet side of the business. Calls to the Sprint store in Shallotte were just as fruitless.
But I did call Sprint in Wilmington, and here thought I hit gold. They are selling an HTC phone called the Mogul, which is newer and in some ways better than the AT&T 8525. They also had excellent plans, and I would have had a total monthly bill significantly lower than the other carriers. But after perusing their very detailed (perhaps unfortunately detailed) coverage map, I saw that coverage in this area is spotty, and along major portions of the route I take to Summerville SC to visit my grandkids it is nonexistent. So, unfortunately, scratch Sprint.
Complicating all this is the two year signup problem. Many companies would only consider a two year contract; some would allow one year but with a substantially more expensive phone price. So I am faced with having to sign up for a long period of time with a phone that is not what I want. But even if I just replace the phones I have with newer voice phones, I will still end up signing up for one or two years and thus not be able to get the data phone that I want!
What's a guy to do? Answer: nothing. But I will keep looking.
(Bob Seidel is a local computer consultant in the Southport - Oak Island area. You can visit his Website at www.bobseidel.com or e-mail questions or column ideas to him at bsc@bobseidel.com. For specific inquiries, please call Bob Seidel Consulting, LLC at 278-1007.)