The Conclusion - Executive Summary

For those of you viewing now who don't want to wait around for the whole story, here's the executive summary.

The iPhone 4 is brilliant. My wife and I both love it.  The Nobel committee should establish a new prize for ingenuity and award it in perpetuity to Steve Jobs.

But unfortunately, the phone has a fatal flaw. Both at home and at work, the iPhone 4 has trouble staying connected to the network. If I can get a call through, it usually dies within 30 seconds. At first, I thought the problem was just AT&T's service, but a colleague with an iPhone 3 was able to come into my office where I was unable to send or receive a call, and happily do both. I thought maybe this was the antenna problem, but even sitting on the table without touching it wasn't noticeably better. Which makes it useless as a phone, and useless for everything else when I don't have WiFi access. Perhaps the promised free cover might help, but it seems unlikely, and the cover won't arrive until weeks after the end of the 30 day return policy. 

We agonized long and hard, but then my wife tried to reach me for something urgent and couldn't complete the call, and our decision was made.  We sent it back and got her a Fascinate.

The Fascinate is far from perfect. It's not nearly as smooth to use as the iPhone, mostly because Verizon has cluttered up the interface with junk. By junk, I mean applications that Verizon charges for that I have little interest in. As a good example, right on the home page is a "Voicemail" button. If you click that button, you've signed up for Verizon's extended voicemail for which they charge an extra monthly fee. You have to read the manual to figure out how to access the free voice mail. You can't get rid of the prominent voicemail button, though with some work and lots of reading of the user's guide, it is possible to move it off the home page. The interface is full of such clutter that can't be removed. Very annoying. 

Combine that with far fewer apps than the iPhone (Netflix was a real treat on the iphone), and the Fascinate is far less of a device than it could be.  But at least it works well as a phone, email, texting, and browser.