I didn’t quit AT&T cold turkey, though.  In fact, I told myself this was an experiment to see how a different network and device might work for me – knowing that I could cancel within 30 days and return the phone itself for a refund.  Instead of porting my AT&T number, I left it active on the iPhone, and began directing friends and family to use my Google Voice number for calls and SMS, which I pointed at the new Verizon phone.  I also set my iPhone to forward calls to that number.

If you’re anxious to hear the result of this experiment, it’s this:  I am cancelling my AT&T account and going to try tomorrow to port my old number to the new Verizon account (something I hope is possible, but I’m okay if it isn’t).  For more details about this decision, read on as I dive into three topics: the phone, the network, and Google Voice.

1. The phone

First off, I must make it clear that the Droid doesn’t do everything as well as the iPhone.  The hardware isn’t as pretty.  The default software isn’t as nice.  Text selection isn’t as nice as iPhone or even WinMo.  Some apps I really liked on the iPhone are still missing (Kindle, Urbanspoon, OneBusAway).  Some apps like Facebook don’t compare.  Next to the iPhone, the built-in media experience is pretty awful. 

But there are a lot of things it does better.  It has a hardware keyboard which is a win for most people, though I find myself using the software keyboard out of habit which I actually like better than the iPhone’s.  It’s mostly the same but adds text prediction and is smarter about letting me fix its mis-corrections.

The screen is gorgeous.  The camera (with flash) is way better.  The software is highly customizable.  I can run apps in the background and the OS has central management of apps that sync (including the Facebook app, Twitter app, mail apps, etc).  Push Gmail is automatic. There are lots of great apps like Twitdroid and Google Sky Map, and many iPhone staples like Pandora, OpenTable, Flixster, Bump are around too.   Many of them, like Pandora and Qik, are far more functional. I can have Pandora playing in the background while I do other things.  I can stream video to Qik over the 3G connection.  There’s even an app in the Android Market for tethering over USB or Bluetooth (though I wonder if Verizon will have something to say about that soon).

The OS itself does a lot right too.  A common theme seems to be central management of app behaviors – like syncing, notifications, and even power usage.  The first time the Droid got to 15% power it offered to show me which apps and settings were draining my battery!  Who knows if it’s totally accurate, but man was this helpful.  At one point it helped me identify a widget I’d installed which apparently had a bad battery-draining bug.  Good stuff.

The built-in Maps and search features are awesome.  Google Latitude is pretty well integrated (much more useful than it was on the iPhone), as is a pretty effective voice search.  Finally, the Droid earns high marks from me for its Google Voice integration.  More on that below.

When I got the phone I was concerned about a few specific problems, including reports from people I talked to that they heard an echo during every conversation.  A quick look around the web revealed that this was a known issue (with a workaround which worked).  This problem was eliminated a few days ago when the OS 2.0.1 update was pushed to Droid users.  That update brought several other improvements, including an improved lock screen and some performance, battery, and reliability improvements.  Thus far my experience has been that this update is how the phone should have shipped originally.  But that’s not necessarily a knock against Google / Motorola / Verizon, since everybody seems to be shipping not-quite-finished software these days… In fact, the speed and ease with which they deployed a solid first “service pack” via an Over The Air update was impressive.

2. The Network

Verizon’s network, at this point, has proven vastly superior to AT&T’s.  While it feels like the number of “bars” I have is often lower, it doesn’t seem to matter.  The iPhone would say 5 bars but still fail to make calls, drop them half way through, or completely fail to establish a data connection.  When the data connection did work, it was very rarely as fast as it could / should be.  And latency always seemed to be a major problem.

On Verizon, I consistently get a responsive data connection.  I know that when I click my shortcut to the WS-DOT bridge traffic map that I’ll be seeing it in a few seconds.  On the iPhone 3G with AT&T, I’d often wait nearly a minute for it to begin loading, or have to try several times to get it to load at all.  Getting Twitter or Facebook updates on the iPhone was hit or miss.  Twitter apps would regularly return obscure connection errors, and the Facebook app would often require several attempts to upload a photo (trying to do this from a crowded place like a soccer game was basically impossible).

3. Google Voice

When Michael Arrington talked about the Droid with the Gilmor Gang, he raved about its integration with Google Voice.  I decided to give this a shot, and while I’m not sure its as big of a revolution as he suggested, I do see what he was on about.  The Droid + Google Voice together feel like a truly natural evolution of the mobile experience.

So what does it do?  Well, a Google Voice number is sort of like a domain name on the web.  You pick the area code and number (from the available ranges) that you want to use as your public alias, and then point it at a destination (via the device’s phone number, which is now more like its IP address).  You can choose multiple destinations (if you don’t answer one device, it can ring another), or you can change where it points on the fly.  SMS messages and voice mails arrive on the Google Voice web site at no cost, and can be accessed via a web browser or through a Google Voice application like the one for Android phones.  For “legacy” devices you can have it immediately forward messages via traditional SMS.  But with the Droid this isn’t necessary, you can just use the Google Voice app instead of the SMS app and not even know the difference (except that you don’t have to pay for SMS and can read or respond to them on the web).

In the end, it’s not a revolution as Arrington may make it sound, but it is an improvement.  With a phone like the iPhone it’s hard to imagine why Google Voice is useful.  It’s complicated to use it as your number because when you call people using the phone’s dialer, they see your device’s real number instead.  And Apple won’t even approve the Google Voice dialer app.  Same goes for text messages.

But on the Droid, there are no such restrictions from Apple / AT&T.  The Google Voice app takes over your dialer, so any calls you make come from that number.  It’s a largely seamless experience.  I say “largely” because the SMS experience could still be a little better integrated (perhaps by having GV push the messages into the phone’s native SMS app), and they don’t quite have the sync / push experience nailed down for them, but it’s nearly there and I’m confident it will be all the way there soon enough.

Overall verdict

As I mentioned before, I’m keeping the Droid and Verizon.  But there are a few caveats to be aware of.  I would NOT recommend one for non-techies like my girlfriend (who currently uses an iPhone 2G on T-Mobile) or my sister yet.  At least not to replace an iPhone.  Why?

Some of what the Droid does right it also does wrong.  The Droid (and more the Android platform as a whole) is built for a world that most people don’t quite live in yet.  That’s a world where you never need to connect your phone to your computer.  Don’t get me wrong, this is where things are going, I have no doubt about that.  But it’s not where things are, for most people.

Let’s look at one specific scenario: pictures.  First off, the phone has no concept of syncing pictures (or other media) to it.  In fact, if you plug the USB cable into your computer nothing happens.  As far as I can tell there’s no management software like iTunes for it.  It doesn’t even mount itself as a drive unless you push a button on the phone’s screen once it’s connected.  Because of this, there is no sync feature, so no process by which properly sized and thumbnailed images get copied to the device.  Instead you can mount the storage card and drag images to a folder on the device’s SD card, but the first time you go to view them they’ll take a while to load and have thumbnails generated.  Not a pleasant experience.

I doubt Google sees this as a flaw, though.  Copying or syncing media to your phone isn’t something you’re meant to do in the Google world.  Instead you’re meant to consume media “from the cloud” using the appropriate app or mobile web site.  For photos ,there are dozens of apps for interacting with Picasa, Flickr, Facebook.

For now, the iPhone has the advantage here.  It has a fantastic experience for locally synced media, while enabling lots of cloud-based scenarios like viewing and uploading Facebook photos.

The iPhone also has the advantage when it comes to a simple, intuitive user experience.  The Droid experience is good, but requires a lot more customization to really make it shine, in my opinion.  The iPhone just works.  If not for AT&T’s widely publicized failings, I would say that the iPhone is the best choice for a normal human.  But the reality is that AT&T’s network has been getting worse, not better.  That alone may be enough to justify a different choice, and the Droid is a perfectly sensible one.  Just make sure there’s a geek around to set it up for you.

This is, of course, something I (and others) wrote about last week. Unfortunately Andrew doesn’t bring any new evidence to the table and just echoes the same theory. So I guess the best we can do at this point is wait and see if the FCC investigation started on Friday sheds any light on the situation.

Anyway, this makes me wonder why it took so long for a mainstream tech blog to catch on? Is everyone just that anxious to vilify AT&T?

Some, like TechCrunch, suggest that AT&T is behind this.  Others like Om Malik think AT&T has nothing to do with it, since they allow similar apps on Blackberry devices.

I’m not sure who to blame, and it really could be either.  AT&T surely doesn’t like the idea of you having access to unlimited SMS (that, via Google Voice and the iPhone’s push notification API, could work exactly like real SMS – where your friends can’t even tell the difference).  I bet the SMS fees they charge are just pure gravy.  I’m also not convinced by Om’s argument that the existence of Blackberry GV apps is sufficient for ruling out AT&T as the decision maker.

But let’s say Om is right and they don’t really care.  Why would Apple block Google Voice?  I can think of a few possibilities:

1. Someone at Apple thinks AT&T cares, and doesn’t want to strain their relationship.
2. Apple is afraid that Google might establish a beachhead on the iPhone and in the future use it to steal customers away to Android devices.
3. Or maybe, just maybe… Apple has plans to offer Google Voice-like functionality in the future, and doesn’t want to have to compete on their own platform.

I have no idea if Apple is even capable of that, but the more I think about it, the more it makes sense to me.  Apple is smart.  They know this is just delaying the inevitable and that eventually we’ll have seamless integration between normal PSTN voice service and VOIP service.  Or we’ll just have VOIP and nothing else.  If Apple doesn’t drive this, someone else will, whether it’s on their platform or another.

Update:  Apparently I’m not the only one thinking along these lines.

Update 2: Or maybe it wasn’t Apple’s call after all. John Gruber claims to have confirmation that AT&T was indeed behind this.

Now I’m aware that most 3G users aren’t getting the discounted $199/$299 pricing that new subscribers are getting.  Though apparently some people are getting that deal.  Most others are paying $399/$499 depending on the model.  But $599/$699?  That’s ludicrous.

What’s more, I actually bought another iPhone 3G from the AT&T store at FULL PRICE in February, after my original iPhone 3G was stolen.  Apparently, even though I paid full price, they extended my contract and upgrade eligilibility from that point in February.  I asked very specifically, and was told by the AT&T store staffer, that replacing my iPhone 3G at full price would not affect my upgrade eligibility. 

Well, apparently that’s not true.  Even though I paid the full $399 price for an 8GB replacement phone, I’m now listed as not eligible to upgrade until 7/15/2010.  Seriously.  If I’d been told that buying that full price replacement would extend my contract and upgrade term, I obviously wouldn’t have done it, and would’ve just bought one on eBay or Craiglist.  In retrospect, I probably should’ve done that anyway.

So this afternoon I spent a good 20 minutes going over this with a customer service rep who insisted that I had never bought an iPhone 3G last summer and that I “upgraded” to the 3G from an original iPhone in February at an Apple Store.  The account summary she forwarded me indicates an upgrade and new contract in February but doesn’t indicate what I “upgraded” from or where I did it, so I think she was just making that up.

I told her I wouldn’t care about the contract being renewed if she could just fix my upgrade eligibility, since it should be based on the last time I got a discount on a phone, not the last time I paid full price for a replacement.  She said this couldn’t be done, and refused to transfer me to anybody else.

The best she could tell me was that I needed to take any paperwork I had to the AT&T store in Bellevue and try to convince them to fix it for me.  This means rummaging through boxes (since I just moved) to hopefully find at least the receipt for the new phone, and taking at least an hour out of my time, with very little promise of actually achieving anything.

I’m going to try that tonight or tomorrow.  If they can’t help me, I may have to go take a look at the Pre.

Here is my response to this effort:

You guys are showing the FSF’s true colors with this action.  It is bad enough that you wage this campaign of lies and deceit against the iPhone (half of the reasons on your “5 reasons” list are blatant lies), but now you’re taking action directed specifically at hurting users who have chosen to support a product other than yours.

And as much as you may deny it, that is exactly what you are doing – advocating products and services that fit your particular (and greatly skewed) view of how the world should be.  You aren’t revolutionaries out to overthrow the draconian monarchy.  You’re more like Jehovah’s Witnesses coming to my door to peddle your own obscure brand of morality and a book that’s kind-of sort-of like a more popular one but supposedly better because it’s “free,” but not actually free just free in some pedantic sense using your own book’s definition of free.  That is, you still want me to pay you for it.

Well guess what, protesting against consumers for choosing another product is about as productive as a 5 year old crying at the grocery store because they want a candy bar.  You’re just going to piss off everybody else in the store, and embarrass the only people who have a vested interest in seeing you succeed.

Like the Japanese car in the Dearborn auto plant parking lot, Macs and iPhones must create problems for switchers working at Apple competitors as well as companies with a PC-or-die IT policy.

He then goes on to link to this very blog!

However, Microsoft appears to be okay with at least one of its employees running Vista on a MacBook in the office. Blogger Chris Pirillo pointed to Brandon Paddock, a self-described geek who works on search technology at Microsoft (but not in the Microsoft Mac Business Unit, where it’s okay to show up with Mac hardware and software, or at least it is at the “SVC,” the Silicon Valley Campus in Mountain View, Calif.).

It’s true, I’m a Microsoft developer (on Windows no less) with a Macbook.  And an iPhone!  I’m also rather fond of both of them.

I’m not the only one, either.  I see as many iPhones as Blackjacks these days, maybe more.  It’s really an awesome device and it doesn’t surprise me at all that geekier folk would pick one up.

I also wasn’t the first on the shell team with a Macbook.  My friend David used to be an SDET on the team, but is now a PM.  His primary machine is a first-gen black Macbook.  I’m pretty sure I’ve seen at least one Macbook Pro in a nearby office, and my boss has an iMac at home.

Many of them are like me, and run Vista pretty much exclusively on them.  I know some didn’t even keep the OS X partition around when they installed it.  It’s neat to play with once in a while (and the VMware Fusion and Parallels stuff is getting really impressive), but not terribly useful for practical purposes, especially if your life revolves around building a competing OS.

If you do run OS X, you can even get it on our network, although some things like getting on the WiFi take a fair bit of extra work.  Luckily there’s an IT help page that walks you through it.

But as I said, in my case it’s pretty much a PC.  A stylish, well-put-together PC.  I even recently put a Vista orb sticker on top covering the backlit Apple logo (which likes to shine through while it’s running, creating an eerie, ghostly effect).  Not because anyone ever cared that I carried a Mac around, but because I’m very proud of the team I work on and what we do there.  And it fits perfectly =)

If I haven’t mentioned it before, I love working at Microsoft.  I love that I can carry a Macbook around to every meeting and have others think nothing of it.  I love that others on the team are willing to look at, use, and sometimes even live with our main competitor’s product.  I think it’s important to know what “the other side” is doing, and to understand what users are talking about when they make comparisons.  I think it’s also important that we respect the great things they’re doing down there, and strive to do better if we see some area where they’ve got an edge on us.

Little tidbit on that note:  One day a friend of mine on the team printed off a couple dozen screenshots of Leopard, showing off various tasks the user can do in OS X, and hung them on one of our hallways.  Across from it are pictures of the same tasks in that incredibly well-kept secret of a project that we’re working on.  There are post-it notes and markers next to each wall where passersby leave comments / questions.

I wonder if any hallways in Cupertino have something like that?

Just as I predicted

http://www.apple.com/itunes/download/

It redirects you based on your OS, which is kind of annoying if it doesn’t happen to properly detect you’re on a 64-bit version of Windows.

Update: Sadly it isn’t actually a 64-bit binary.  Lame, but what do you expect from Apple, who seem to be pretty stuck in a 32-bit world.  At least it includes a 64-bit iPhone / iPod Touch driver, which is all that was really needed.

Update 2: As of late 2008, Apple has finally put up a 64-bit landing page with a direct download link for the latest 64-bit installer.

It’s a real shame that the iPhone launched without a 64-bit driver.  Even worse, 6 months later and it’s still nowhere to be found.  At least this is a sign of hope, though, when compared with the previous error (seen below).  Then I can finally sync with my desktop instead of my laptop.

Just like previous Start++ customizations, these can be exported and shared on BrandonTools.com – in fact, I’ve already created a place to share them with others (and you can subscribe via RSS to see when new ones are added!).  Setting one up isn’t too difficult if you’re familiar with how these kinds of web apps work.  Below is what the gadget building UI looks like:

(Click to enlarge)

Note that Start++ is still in beta, and that the capabilities of Start++ Start Gadgets will continue to grow.

So what are you waiting for?  Go grab the download.

What’s great about this update is that it fixes every issue that I wanted them to fix (in terms of bugs, not features like EAS support which it still needs).  Here are the major ones for me:

1. Bluetooth to my car no longer drops out if it’s not plugged into power.  From what I read on forums this seemed like a specific interaction between the iPhone and Audi’s handsfree system.  Because of that I was afraid it wouldn’t get fixed.  But it was!
2. IMAP folder support works now.  Previously I could only sync my “inbox” folder.  At one point I managed to get the IMAP Path Prefix thing to work and could see my folders for about a day, but then the mail app started crashing whenever I tried to run it, and I had to reset the account.  Now it just works – no fancy configuration steps needed, the other folders just magically started showing up after the update.
3. Album view UI bugs are gone.  It used to be that if you went into Album view, selected a specific album, and then hit the “home” button, when you went back to the iPod app you would still be in Album view inside the album you’d selected, but without a “back” button to get back to the main Album list.  Also, hitting “Album” again at the bottom had no effect at all.  So you had to switch to another mode like Artist and then back, if you wanted to change albums.  Now it’s doubly fixed – because not only does the “back” button show up as it should – but tapping “Album” at the bottom also takes you back to the top level view.  Sweet.

 I’m really glad they were able to fix these things so quickly, as well as the security vulnerabilities reported.  When the patch was first announced, it sounded like that was all they’d addresses.  I was extremely happy, then, to find these other issues fixed – and fixed well.

My previous phones (BlackJack, PPC-6700, PPC-6600, Treo 600) all had issues and quirks that were never fixed.  Thus, I was actually prepared to live with the above annoyances because that’s what I was used to doing.

To the iPhone developers / PMs / QA people – thank you for working so quickly to address these real customer issues and not putting them off because individually they only affected a small subset of users.  My impression of Apple (a company I quite honestly disliked a great deal until a year or two ago) just keeps getting better.  I can only hope that competitors (in the form of Microsoft, Samsung, HTC / UTStarcom, Palm, Motorola, etc) take note.

iTunes and the iPod both work fine, and the iPhone is recognized and shows up as a disk / camera.  But iTunes refuses to see it and sync.  Why couldn’t they get this right?  I hope they fix it soon… having to sync through my laptop (32-bit) is kind of annoying.