My New Phone

I had an interesting set of circumstances last week: since I’m still on my parents’ family plan for my cellphone, I had an opportunity to upgrade my phone only about seven or eight months in, but I had to do it immediately. So, I went straight for the black 16GB iPhone 4¹. Yes, I know that buying a phone a week before WWDC is typically a horrendously stupid idea, but I’m betting every dollar on John Gruber being dead-on.

Of course, I had been using an HTC Droid Incredible until now. I’ve also pointed out a lot of good things about it… and a lot of bad things. The experience was generally positive, though, but the iPhone is… something else.

I miss some of the features of my old phone… the blinking notification LED, the manageable if ugly notification system, the ability to change screen brightness from anywhere by swiping down from the top, the ability to hit fast-forward on a bluetooth car stereo and start playing without pulling out my phone, and not having to be careful how I hold it with my left hand (yeah, that really is a problem for me).

I traded it all, though, for a simply brilliant experience everywhere else. Browsing rocks. Every app rocks - every one that I install. Multitasking rocks. Actually being able to find a desktop dock rocks. Sharing apps I found with my friends rocks. Awesome battery life rocks. The hardware build quality rocks. I can go on and on.

I hate to use a car analogy, but I feel like I’ve traded a pickup truck for an expensive BMW. No, I can’t tow the boat to the lake with it, but it’s so damn fun to drive that I simply don’t care what I’m not doing with it.