Lessons in Tech Shopping

I Do These Things So You Don't Have To

Update (7/5/12):  Did a few tweets back and forth with @samsungsupport today.  You can see at least my half of the conversation in the Twitter widget on the right.  I have to say, having someone log onto a database and read the same information back to you that you can read yourself on the web isn't really satisfying.  Phone support does the same thing.  So where things stand now is that Samsung is still waiting for a part.  There is no estimated date for the repair.  Replacement phones "are not covered by the warranty."  And I still have no phone.  I have no phone other than the rock-solid, backed by a real company that cares about its customers and image iPhone 4 that is.

Update (7/1/12):  After I shipped my phone, on June 25th via UPS Ground, to Texas, Samsung finally acknowledged receipt four days later.  Received a note yesterday that my repair is on hold for parts, with an estimated repair date of July 6th.  The phone will be repaired and shipped promptly as soon as the parts come in.  Apparently, just shipping me a working phone isn't an option.  If I didn't have this iPhone 4 lying around here, this would mean I'd have no phone until all of this was done.  Nice job, Samsung!

What good is it, having a blog, if you can't use it for some personal ranting once in a while?  The "Sunday Run Album Review" for this week will have to wait while I get this off my chest.

On May 19th, I received my Galaxy Nexus Android phone from Google.  This was awesome.  I paid not much more than an on-contract iPhone for a phone that would accept the SIM from my two-year-old iPhone 4.  I could let my contract lapse and live the good life of the non-contract mobile phone customer.  The newest Android version measured up nicely to iOS, and I would get to keep my grandfathered, unlimited data plan.

Sure, there were some things I knew I'd miss:  free iMessaging to all of my iPhone-owning friends, a few iPhone-only (or just iPhone-better) apps.  Surely, though, that would be worth it to free myself from contracts, the boredom of the seemingly never-changing iOS interface, and the horrendous piece of junk that is iTunes.

Turns out there were some things I didn't know I'd miss as well:  customer service and quality control.  I've experienced excellent customer service before, so I know it when I see it:

Amazon:  I once ordered a gift for someone on Amazon, and paid extra to have it delivered overnight. They were leaving the next afternoon, you see, and we wanted to hand it to them personally.  UPS then began sending me messages telling me that my object wouldn't be delivered for several days.  I complained to Amazon (though, I'm not sure it was really their fault), and they gave me a $30 credit toward future purchases.  Then the thing showed up on time anyway.  When I tried to give the $30 back (??), they said, "Keep it.  Thanks for being a loyal customer."

Band That I Will Not Identify Publicly (to keep them from getting in trouble):  I was thinking of buying the vinyl release of a particular album, but the packaging didn't indicate whether or not a download code was included.  I contacted the band directly, and they responded that, "No, for various reasons, we couldn't include a download with the album.  Here are the files, though.  Thanks for supporting the band."  I hadn't even bought the record yet!  I went right back to their website, though, and ordered directly from them.  The transaction ended with an email that said something like, "Thank you!  You've done something wonderful for us, our families, and the city in which we live!"

Apple:  This one is most relevant to our discussion.  About a month after I got my iPhone 4, it stopped connecting to the mobile network and said something like "SIM Error."  I called Apple.  The tech on the phone said, "Hmmm.  Your 30 days of free support have lapsed.  Well, let's see what we can do anyway."  Turns out, all he could do was make an appointment for me at the Apple Store.  That's a bit of a drive for me; but when I walked in, the "Genius" on duty swapped my phone for a new one fresh out of the box, no questions asked.  I didn't have AppleCare.  Now I realize that I brought the phone in for a hardware failure, but in a testament to Apple's quality control, that phone was rock-solid for the next two years.  In a further testament to Apple's quality control, the phone I upgraded from was a refurbished iPhone 3g that I passed on to a family member and is still in use to this day.

Now to discuss Google / Samsung.  As I said, I purchased my Samsung Galaxy Nexus directly from the Google Play store a little more than a month ago.  It shipped promptly, and I had it in my hands within two days.  Yesterday, it stopped charging when plugged into the wall and it stopped showing up as a device when connected to my computer.

Google's tech support is available 24/7 and they are very friendly.  All they could do, though, was tell me to pull the battery and, when that didn't work, tell me to perform a factory reset.  When the factory reset didn't work, they connected me to Samsung for warranty service.  Warranty service consists of shipping my phone, via UPS ground, to Texas so that Samsung can diagnose the problem.  If the problem is covered by warranty, they'll fix / replace the phone at no charge.  If not, they'll tell me what it will cost me.  Turnaround time for this is 5-10 days, "not including shipping time."

Who knows?  Maybe everything will turn out fine, and I'll get a working phone back from Samsung in less than two weeks.  Even if that does happen, though, Google has a lot to learn about dealing with customers and standing behind their products.  Their initial customer base may have consisted mostly of people like me -- technophile, early adopters who don't like asking for help.  But if they'd like to make the most of their Motorola acquisition and get into the handset business, then they're going to have to become a little more customer-friendly.  They could learn a lot from Amazon, Apple, and a not-so-small indie rock band.

I won't suffer too much without my Galaxy Nexus, though.  My iPhone 4 still works just fine.

Switch Complete

I've Joined the Android Army

On Friday night, my new Galaxy Nexus arrived.  I popped the microSIM from my iPhone 4 into a regular-sized SIM adapter.  Popped that into the Nexus, and I was up and running.  Everything worked, but in the morning, I made a call to AT&T just to make sure I'd be getting the correct data speeds.

Switching from iOS to Android has been more painless than I ever could have imagined.  I've come across only a few apps that don't have Android versions, notables being Cooks Illustrated and NPR Music.  I love both of those, but I honestly used them only rarely.  Also, CoolMom will be inheriting the iPhone 4, so they won't be far away.

The iPhone has a well-deserved reputation as an excellent music player, but I'm loving the Nexus so far. Yesterday, I decided moments before my run that I was going to try out Memoryhouse's The Slideshow Effect.  I purchased it through the AmazonMP3 Android app, which isn't available on iOS, and had the album streaming to my bluetooth headphones in seconds.  There wasn't any downloading to iTunes and then waiting for an entire sync before leaving.  As a matter of fact, there wasn't any downloading at all.  I streamed the entire album during my run.  Amazon is also running discounts on certain albums purchased via the app, so it gave me an incentive to grab albums by Kurt Vile, EMA, and Lambchop that I'd always meant to buy.

The screen is so big and beautiful it could almost replace my Kindle.  Surfing the web with the mobile version of Chrome is a pleasure, and voice actions -- the Android version of Siri without the backtalk -- are a blast.  Best of all, I didn't have to re-up for another two years to get it.

I'm comparing things to an iPhone 4.  That means no Siri, a less capable camera, slower hardware, and slower mobile data than an iPhone 4s, and it's still pretty close.  The build quality of iPhones is just fantastic, and the Galaxy Nexus does seem a little flimsy by comparison.  The speaker on the iPhone 4 was a big improvement over the one on the 3g from which I upgraded.  The Nexus speaker brings me back to those awful days with the iPhone 3g.  No more iMessaging all my iPhone-toting friends.  And, strangely, the Nexus reports no bars in some parts of the house, while the iPhone 4 always reported a strong signal.  Haven't missed or dropped a call yet, though.

It's all been a little anticlimactic.  I thought I'd either be blown away by the thing or that I'd absolutely hate it.  What I've found is that the latest version of Android, Ice Cream Sandwich, stacks up really well with iOS.  I won't have any trouble listening to music or staying up-to-date with bands, venues, and other blogs via Twitter, Tumblr, and Facebook.  I can still buy tickets straight from my phone.  So, my advice:  whenever you're ready for a new phone, try both flavors and get what you like.  I really wanted this to be controversial.  Oh well.

Contemplating the Big Switch

iOS to Android

You know that feeling you get when someone has political views that are the total opposite of your own? You think that they must have something wrong with them to be so wrong about something so obvious.  Well, that's a feeling I get anyway.  I also get that feeling when people say, -- and I've heard several people say this -- "I don't keep any music on my iPhone."

I'm sorry.  What?

My iPhone's role as a music player is easily more important to me than its role as a phone.  I listen to music on it when I run.  I listen to music on it as I nod off on airplanes.  It's how I listen to music in the car when I'm not listening to satellite radio.  But getting music onto the iPhone is supremely aggravating to me. I have always hated having to use iTunes to "sync" music between my computer and my phone.  Why, oh why can't I just mount the phone as a drive and drag and drop albums from the computer to the phone?  Don't get me wrong.  For large libraries, music management software is essential.  I just don't think it should be necessary for getting files of any type onto your phone.

While Android has always appealed to my technical side, because of the iPod I've been an iTunes user since way back.  Also, all of the carrier non-removable bloatware apps and branding have turned me off of most of the Android phones being offered.  So I stuck with Apple.  But, now, Google is selling an unlocked, unskinned, no bloatware, contract-free version of the Galaxy Nexus directly via its Google Play site, and I think I may be ready to switch.

The Galaxy Nexus will work on the ATT network, so I can just take the SIM card from my iPhone, and stick it in the Nexus using an adapter.  I may have to make a call to ATT customer service to make sure I get the full network speed on the new phone, but then I should be good to go.

I'll post my impressions here as I go through the switch.  On some level, it's sure to be traumatic.  Mostly because I like making things like this much more complicated than they need to be.

First example:  For years, unless someone has given me an iTunes gift card, I have bought almost all of my digital music from Amazon.  Amazon's Cloud Player allows you to store music online (this happens automatically for music purchased from Amazon) and to stream it to your device.  It works through Mobile Safari, but there is no native iOS app.  In anticipation of there being "an app for that" on Android, I decided to take advantage of that service's unlimited music storage and to augment my past purchases already stored there by uploading my local music library.  Long story short:  I started that process about twelve hours ago and the uploader tells me that I have seven hours to go.

Slow uploads to Amazon's Cloud Drive are, obviously, not an Android problem, but I'll still be keeping the old iPhone close by, just in case.