The iPhone Vs. LG Voyager

It's official. The iPhone 3GS has smashed records for AT&T and Apple.

I would love to have an iPhone but the only carrier in the US is AT&T and I'm already quite invested with Verizon. Every carrier has horror stories associated with them, but in our relations with Verizon we've had good luck with customer service as well as technical service.

AT&T didn't come into our area with coverage until late in the game and when they finally did put in tower coverage the coverage was unreliable and spotty.

In other words, they left a bad taste in my mouth after seeing how they ran their business. If you followed my blog you know how I feel about businesses that seem incompetent with their customer relations.

I'm told that they're better today. I don't particularly care. There's a similar effect for restaurants. It's quite common for a restaurant to work long and hard at building a loyal number of regulars, but it takes only one bad experience to lose a customer forever.

That doesn't mean I don't wish I had an iPhone. I have an iPod Touch, the iPhone's close cousin, and I owned a Verizon LG Voyager. The iPod gives a pretty close experience to what an iPhone is like in most areas other than actually calling and texting (and a couple other features like taking photos and GPS, since the hardware isn't available on an iPod). The iPod does give the computer integration, music, podcast, and touchscreen as well as close form factor to the iPhone as well as the app store integration. It runs the same operating system as well.

Having used both the iPod Touch and Voyager, I can tell you that the interface to the iPod is light years beyond the Voyager and it's Verizon technology kin.

The touch interface on the iPod is responsive and probably three to four times more accurate than the Voyager's.

The app store on Apple is convenient and makes the iPod more flexible. Yes, Apple acts as the gatekeeper for all applications on the iPod and you won't (intentionally) find porn-based applications on the iPod/iPhone, but overall there are a simply huge number of various applications to choose from and they aren't tying you directly to Apple's brand overtly. Verizon requires you to do everything through Verizon and they're quite limiting in what I could and couldn't do on their phone.

The iPod allows for wifi access. Not so sure about Verizon's phones. It's not on the Voyager.

The iPod/iPhone was integrated with my computer. I could back it up and sync data easily with my computer, without having to find some kind of accessory kit with the proper cable for use with my particular phone. There are even applications to allow you to explore and navigate your iPhone/iPod from your computer. My Verizon phone was very much a separate accessory; it is as if Verizon is afraid of diluting their brand by allowing the customer to have any control over the product.

The only place I preferred my Voyager was the tactile keyboard. I could type significantly more quickly than on my iPod. However I could learn to work the iPhone's key display in a pinch (on the Voyager you almost had to get proficient with the full keyboard; the touchscreen was horribly inaccurate and lagged, making it nearly impossible to use.)

The Voyager was barely usable with the touch screen. For anything more complicated than viewing text messages I often had to drop to using the keyboard to get anything done; I can't count the number of times my phone thought I wanted to edit or view a contact entry when I was trying to get the damn thing to scroll. The iPod? No problem. If anything the iPod was almost too responsive, the screen just begged to be touched. The Voyager was so finicky and glitchy that it was just the opposite.

I don't know if it's a problem with Verizon just not "getting it" or if they're so stuck in some paranoid business model of controlling the brand rather than creating a great customer experience that limits them so much. Verizon has a great network, I've had excellent luck with coverage. The services offered by their website have worked well for us.

Now I just wish they had good products to match those services. I'm hoping that at some point Apple will cut their exclusivity with AT&T and create a product with Verizon...so far Verizon has show zero ability to "get it".