I'm not going to assume all of you follow me on Twitter (but honestly, you should -- it's some of my best work) so I feel the need to tell you: I HATE MY CELL PHONE.
In the last two years of owning this piece of shit (and I'm gonna just warn you now about the use of profanity coming at you in this post), which comes to about 730 days, I assure you I have hated it for about 700 of those days.
For starters, I got kind of conned into buying it. I went into the Verizon store intent on buying a Motorola Droid like the one my father had -- with the pull out QWERTY keyboard. He loved that phone and I knew others who had it. Despite Motorola's reputation for making shitty phones, I was leaning on all the people who recommended Android to me.
But in comes this schmuck salesman with his shiny smile and his "oh, this is the latest phone that everyone has to have" and I bought it. Admittedly, I am easily influenced to these kinds of pitches and I should have ignored him so it's probably my fault I've had this garbagey Motorola Droid Pro for two years, but whatever. It had a Blackberry keyboard and that seemed like a good way to transition to a touch screen (lest I forget - I had Palm pilots and Palm Treos for years -- now that was a great phone).
The problems with it started not long after and continued. They got progressively worse.
Among the many, many issues I've had with this phone, here are the highlights. And I use the word "highlights" loosely because these were not exactly joyous experiences. It was really more like... a treachorous technological lifestyle succubus. In no particular order:
- Rebooting on its own for no apparent reason
- Freezing
- Opening apps in the background that I've shut down repeatedly (draining the battery)
- Terrible battery life -- I even bought an extended battery. What a waste of $45. So angry.
- Inability to retain my music files -- constantly dumped them so I just stopped keeping music on the phone
- Navigation so slow, I'd get lost if I relied on it
- Slow sync - I always typed in email addresses faster than it auto-filled them
- Freezing 95% of the time on my contacts
- Failure to save speed dials
- Turning on all by itself when I've had it shut off for minutes or hours
- Failure to sync with my Kindle app so I could seldom read books on it (to solve this, all my Kindle purchases were soon made on the phone because my other devices would sync up)
- Apps that update so often you wanna put a fork in your eye (seriously - WTF?!)
- Does not playback video (that stopped about a year ago)
- Filling in words on emails and texts that I am not typing (it's an effing ghost phone)
- Deleting photos either entirely, partially, randomly, selectively (I have no idea) - and frankly, it takes shit photos anyway
- Terrible widgets -- just... terrible {shakes head in shame}
I'm not gonna go on because hoenstly, I'm getting f@*cking angry about it and it's not worth it.
And I want you to know I tried to make it work. I took it to the Verizon store on three ocassions. The first time they essentially wiped it and started me over. Which was fine - I had no had it that long. The second time they said there was nothing I could do. The third time, they said I could wipe it again but that so long into owning it, they did not recommend that (I took their word for it and I should have just gone ahead and wiped it). I tweeted about my problems often and an astounding 23 days away from my upgrade being available (gee, thanks for paying attention, guys) I heard from BOTH Motorola and Verizon. Verizon was totally useless. They suggested I start the phone in safe mode, which I did, and the phone's been even worse ever since. When I reported back to them that it was worse, they ignored me. When they asked how else they could help, I suggested they might waive whatever money I owed them over the last 23 days of my service and they ignored me again.
One time, after I'd run it in Safe Mode per their suggestion, it took me two days to charge the thing up to 100%. How the hell is that okay?! Don't worry, I told them that, too. They didn't care.
It's really made me hate Verizon, which is unfortunate. It gets the best reception in my home and I am sort of forced to keep them. (So I will make up for it by criticizing them often, until I'm blue in the face.) I am sure the genisues there know it and are laughing at me all the while.
I'm not gonna lie -- I've thrown the thing into a wall twice. Once lightly, and once so hard I cracked the case. After that, I threw the case away because I just wanted the phone to break and give me an excuse to prematurely buy a new one.
Every time I dropped the phone, I held my breath, torn between wanting it to break and worrying it would.
And now, sweet, glorious relief. In less than two weeks, the iPhone 5 will be mine. Complete with a purple Otterbox and undoubtedly, a giant surge of happiness. (My expectations are pretty well managed now anyway -- there's no way the iPhone will be worse than the craptacular I've had, so I can safely assume I will be happier.)
If you were following me on Twitter, you'd know what's coming next. An idea I stole from Meghan who makes my hatred of Android look feeble, god love her. I am going to drive my car over my Android. And I am going to video the whole thing to upload to the internet. And I'm going to work my ass off to make that shit go viral. And I'll be sure to tweet it at Motorola and Verizon. Only then will I feel truly satisfied.
In conclusion, dear readers, I would whole-heartedly recommend the following: NEVER buy a Motorola device, stay away from Android phones (maybe HTC's are worth a damn - I've heard good things, to be fair), and if you can get away from Verizon, do so. This has been an overall miserable experience and this blog entry has been a long time coming.
Motorola and Verizon, on behalf of Apple, I thank you for making me an even bigger fan of Apple products. A tried and true Google devotee (except for Google+ -- still not on board with that), I never thought I'd go iPhone. But so be it. You've done your worst and messed with my life long enough. I cannot wait to boot up the Flipcam.
P.S. (That entry felt DAMNED GOOD to write!)
