Still considering another phone

July 1st has come and gone.  Its only real significance is that it opened up my new phone upgrade window.  It's a long time until my contract ends in November, so Sprint has made things available much earlier than their previous 22 month period.  My two previous phone switches happened around 12 months from the prior change, as I was part of their Premier programme.

Apparently, they weren't making enough money but they made a lot of customers happy.  Of course, smart phones have an ETF of $350 and feature phones are at $200, I believe, but they weren't getting enough of that within 1 year, so the price of happiness was too high, indeed.

I currently have an iPhone 4S with 32 GB of storage.

I'm thinking about:

• LG Optimus G(2)
• HTC One
• Apple iPhone 5S

Of course, the iPhone 5S won't be out until October or so.  Apple has just revealed that they've added the iPhone to the university sale that they do in autumn, so until the current supplies are gone, no one gets the new products.  This also explains why the MacBook Pro wasn't revised at WWDC, as all products they feel are desired by students will be discounted and after stock runs out, the revised models will be announced.

In any case, I want something fairly current but I'm not sure how far I would want to go.  The displays of all three will be high density displays.  I'd like a tablet but it's too much extra to carry, especially with the laptop computer.  A high density display on a phone will allow me to read and write Japanese, Chinese, and Korean more easily.

Update 2013.07.08: About 1 month from now, there is an announcement from LG, which is expected to be the Optimus G2.  I noticed that Sprint has reduced the price of the Optimus G from US$199.99 to US$99.99, according to my contract upgrade.  It's still a quad core phone and it sucks battery life as with all the rest--will the new one need a humongous battery and still suck the life out of it?

One thing that concerns me is that Android always has a problem where some app doesn't work with some phone.  These two phones are well known but will all apps work with them?  They have a good chance, but is that enough?

Of course, it has taken time for various apps on iOS to support the iPhone 5 and newer iPad displays.  It matters but there may not be a problem by the time October/November arrives.

Speaking of app compatibility, the HTC One lacks the menu button.  This seems a major flaw, even though some developers have gone out of their way to provide a solution in their applications.

I have a fourth option: do nothing and let the contract expire.  I'm not 100% enamoured of Sprint's service in this area, and my mobile hotspot (Tri-Fi!) regularly has trouble, probably because it doesn't support the lower frequencies and neither WiMAX nor LTE are available at home.  I doubt they'd appreciate losing a 13 year customer, although it would just be the loss of my phone at the moment, as the mobile hotspot has until July of 2014.

It seems to me that they could put better technology into a place that suffers from more trouble, rather than putting poorer, cheaper technology into place.  The signal used to be quite good, but their current technology leaves the mobile hotspot hanging by a 1 or 2 bar thread, where the phone will have double that.  The lower frequency counts, apparently.  Of course, how many times have you seen the number of bars change when you actually started to use the device?  Then again, one the phone, the number of bars represents the voice signal, which could always be fine, while the data signal would be in the toilet.

It's sad to return home from a trip where I was getting around 10 Mbps on WiMAX or LTE to see the connection struggle with e-mail.

I seriously doubt the deal with SoftBank will help in that department.  They'll still consider a small town unworthy of investment, even though the Sprint executives probably live far enough out of Overland Park, Kansas/Kansas City to be consider rural.  I doubt that they have a problem anywhere they go.

Update: 2013.09.10: iPhones 5s and 5c have been announced for September 20th availability.  Could I do with the 5c, which is mostly a warmed-over iPhone 5?  I suppose so but the extra power of the 5s sounds better.  I still haven't seen the LG Optimus G2 available, but Motorola's Moto X is.

Choosing a phone by repair cost

The first day of July this year, I can get a new phone at discount.  I may not jump on that opportunity right away.  I have an iPhone 4S and Applecare + doesn't expire until the 24 months are up, which should be finished around October.

In the last few months, I've been associated with a computer and phone repair shop.  I help them with some odd iPhone/iPod touch and Mac problems.

The phone technician is impressive.  Apple will sometime say that an iPad or iPhone can't be repaired but he repairs them.  I believe what they really mean is that it's not worth their time.  What I've read is that they replace the product right away and then send it to a designated repair facility.  Often, those repairs end up with the product being returned in worse shape than the shape in which it was received.  This also applies to Apple computer repair.

I was having a problem with the backlight of a late 2004 Apple PowerBook.  I discussed the problem with the owner of the shop, who does the computer repair.  We agreed that it was the backlight.  When I checked it 2008, an Apple retailer gave me a guesstimate of US$400, because they would replace the whole rear panel, as Apple does, which includes the backlight.

The owner of this local shop quoted me a price of something like US$90 for labour + US$20 for the part, and he would order an extra part or two, just to have it.  Being that it was late 2012, Apple didn't even have parts available, so getting the whole panel would have required a deal on eBay for a used part, even a whole computer.  I believe that soldering the new backlight in place took minimal time.  It was the disassembly and re-assembly that took the most time.

So it is with phones.  They have a large display, one or more slabs of batteries, and a tiny circuit board.  Often, they're held together with a lot of glue, which makes disassembly almost impossible.  Certain generations of the iPod touch are a pain and the Samsung Galaxy S III is nearly impossible.  (This just in--the Galaxy S 4 is apparently just the opposite.)  If you damage the display on the Samsung GS3, and you don't have at least US$300 for the display, you're in trouble.  Replacing the display could be a mess because of all the glue and the tight fit.

On the other hand, I see iPhone 4, 4S and 5 repaired regularly although the iPhone 5 isn't nearly as fragile.  It's fairly simple to take those three phones apart, as long as you remember where you put the extra pieces.  One of the biggest problems they see is that someone decided to help their friend avoid a major repair cost and forget to finish the job, which in turn, costs more time and energy--and diagnostic and repair costs.

I'm fairly shocked that Apple made it easy to service the phones.  I needed to replace the battery in my 4th generation iPod (the original white model with the monochrome display) and I couldn't open it.  That's rather different with the 4200rpm hard drive, but the case was not meant to be opened by just anyone.  I've been replacing computer parts since the time of the original IBM PC in 1981, so I have a clue, but I don't mess with miniature parts.

This brings me back to the thought of a new phone.  These high resolution and large displays cost a lot of money to replace.  I was considering the LG Optimus G with the 1280x800 (or is it 1280x768?) display.  Now, they've announced the Optimus G Pro with the 1920x1080 display that's even larger.  Even if the phone is US$299 with a contract, the display replacement might be US$400 or more.  Obviously, if you're paying US$10 per month insurance, it's not a bad thing at all.  I suspect Asurion will charge more than US$10 per month for such a phone.  It's good to know that Apple only charge US$99 for two years.  My buddy replaced the display on an Optimus G a few days ago, and he said that there was so much adhesive that it took a lot of time to remove the shards of glass before he could install anything.

I think I'll hold onto my phone another year and see what happens.  After all, I know someone who can repair it quickly.

Are $200 (subsidised) phones worth it?

There are a lot of people who go through smart phones quickly and fewer who have more than one.

I'm still of the opinion that whether the phone is $200 on contract or $600 free of contract, it's too expensive.  It's a huge investment to me, and I would want to part with it after 2 years, but some say that they'll keep them a few months and get rid of them.  Hopefully, someone is buying them.

Maybe, the thing is that I've got a house and a car and bills.  Maybe, these guys don't have those things, so they just have phones and phone bills?  I guess you could handle more than one or pay full price, if you didn't have other commitments and were making loads of money.

It's a bit shocking every time I go for a new phone because there is a huge cash outlay and then, I get some of it back in rebates, but then the carrier wants to charge me for the switch and all the wonderful things they do--like increasing my plan.

New technology is great, but eventually, I see all the smart phones being commodities, as the feature phones are now.  The technology won't matter as much and people will be more concerned about brand and colour and size.

Speaking of which, why do I need a 4.7 inch display?  Are people getting personal with their phones?  Geez.  Anyone need a 400 cubic inch (6.6 litres to the rest of you) V-8 engine today?  It seems like there are a lot of 25-35 year olds who think bigger is always better...like 12 year olds.  Oh, well.  "Everybody has one."  Yep, and thankfully, you can turn off my opinion too.