Sargonas.com

So I love my iPhone, I really do. I left Verizon after 7 years of happy service, and jumped to AT&Ts world class shitty service when the first gen iPhone launched. That little phone was the first ever to last me more than a year. Until that point I upgraded phones annually, coughing up the full phone price almost every time since I was only upgrade-eligible every 2 years. This summer the 3gS launched, and that little work horse was finally traded in, after 2 years of round the clock abuse, and the 3g has been a strong little phone ever since as well.

I have recently had my hands on the Droid and Droid Eris (henceforth referred to as Eris here) from Verizon, however. With the ever increasing frustration I have been getting from the Bay Area AT&T network, that seems to degrade weekly, I am beginning to have doubts how much longer I will be on the iPhone train. The Android app store now has versions of every iPhone app I can’t do without, plus amazing things like Google Goggles. (until you have used it, like I have, you cant understand how cool it really is!). Also the native support of google voice, something I have but am slow to adopt due to the iphone’s clunky support of it, is a big tipping point for me as well. I now have a bay area phone number on GV, and I would like to use it in tandem with my 502 number on a more regular basis.

At this point I am facing a tough decision. Convert my iphone into a powerful ipod, by deactivating its phone service and using it as my day to day ipod as well as it’s wifi powers to run some apps, and switch over to an Android powered phone or ignore all the hooplah and stick to my Apple love. To be honest it’s not looking good for my ex-girlfriend’s stock options at Apple.

Both the Droid and the Eris are enticing. The Eris’s pebble like shape and size is, in my opinion, superior the the physical design of the iPhone in many ways. At first I felt it lagged behind the Droid due to its using the Android 1.5 OS and not the newer 2.0 and due to the fact it runs the HTC SensUI, however I have now learned Android 2.0 will be available for it in January once HTC is done updating SenseUI for it. Even better, you can turn off SenseUI in the settings and use the base Anndroid OS if you so choose. (Although the SenseUI has a lot of improvements the Android can benefit from). The Droid however has a slightly larger screen (0.4 inches) and a slide out keyboard. Using it though is NOTHING like my keyboard experience from when I owned the Verizon 6700 due to its small size and quirky feedback. Also did I mention the Droid is $199 and the Eris is $99?

After spending time with both.. I am finding it harder and harder to resist the urge to go to the store later this week and jump back to Verizon, $175 AT&T termination fee be damned.