Plaidophile

So, I wasn't expecting my iPhone to get bricked, but I was pretty much expecting A2DP to not be supported on it anyway, even though Apple's OS 3.0 page says nothing about which models it's supported on. The lack of A2DP on the EDGE iPhone is, of course, a bit silly.

First of all, it uses a Bluetooth chipset which does support A2DP. Apparently, OS 1.1.1 had some A2DP support temporarily (which was exceptionally gimpy), so there's no hardware-related excuse.

The EDGE iPhone has the really annoying recessed headphone connector. This means that either you have to use iPhone-compatible headphones (which are all overpriced and/or of crappy quality), or you have to use an iPhone headphone adapter (which are all overpriced and/or of crappy quality). Or you can upgrade to the 3G/3Gs. Which means paying at least $15/month more for the same service (okay, you can browse the web a little faster, but when I'm not in WiFi coverage I'm mostly just using it for checking bus schedules and reading Twitter and the like, neither of which takes much bandwidth). I'm not going to spend $15/month for the privilege of using decent headphones with my cellphone.

Even if I do get my iPhone working again I'll probably just switch back to my W580i, which had perfectly adequate A2DP support, a serviceable web browser, downloadable (J2ME) apps, and a kind of crappy mp3 player which I had to use playlist hacks to make useful, but I had to do that on the iPhone anyway due to its lack of shuffle-by-album. My investment in iPhone apps isn't wasted since those will still run on my iPod Touch, and the built-in calendaring and PIM on the W580 actually did some things better than the iPhone (such as to-do list items). And then someday I'll go back to the smartphone world because Android or WebOS or something else will have gotten a lot better.

I do have to decide whether to keep on putting up with AT&T's crap for now or if I should just bite the bullet and pay their ETF so I can switch back to T-Mobile, which always treated me a hell of a lot better. Of course, that leads to a whole other rant: when I bought the iPhone, it was used, with no subsidy, and I in fact had to pay extra money to get a naked SIM, and I was still locked into a two-year contract. Which is complete crap, but I thought it would be worth it to be able to use an iPhone. I really should have just stuck with T-Mobile. Maybe if I bitch at AT&T enough they'll relent and not charge me ETF but I doubt it.

T-Mobile's rate plans also work out a lot better for me. AT&T's lowest rate plan is 450 minutes + unlimited nights and weekends + rollover which is way more minutes than I have ever needed. T-Mobile goes down to 300 minutes with unlimited weekends for contract-free monthly service, and only charges $10/month for unlimited EDGE data (compared to AT&T's $20); when I was last with them they also had unlimited-bandwidth limited-port GPRS for $6/month but they've discontinued that.

They also offer what is essentially $.10/minute pay-as-you-go (without the $1/day "usage fee" that AT&T charges at that rate), but then there's no data plan available. They were also generally nice and helpful (except for the occasional email support ping-pong they played) and I definitely regret giving that up just so I could use a shiny iPhone which has, frankly, been a lot more trouble than it's worth.

Basically the only thing the iPhone did better than my previous setup was having something closer to (but still not) an actual keyboard and better-quality (and much more expensive) apps available. The core stuff I do on the iPhone (basic email, checking bus schedules, basic mapping) worked just as well on the W580i. Of course, every time I've tried switching back to the W580i I've been stymied by AT&T's iPhone-specific data plan bullshit.

I think that ends tonight.