It seems that it boils down once again to the network.
Consumers have had to put up with phone/network couplings for too long. What can realistically be done to break this (or any monopoly), aside from moving to Europe?
Exactly. This is how it is in India too. You can cancel your phone connection anytime, even during the middle of the month, no penalties. These contracts in US are a pain.
In europe, there are mobile telephone services providers who don't operate their own network. In a sense, they are resellers for the network operators. This allows them to innovate in areas where the network operators don't do this, without big up-front investments in creating your own network.
I've had mine for a couple of weeks now. The OS doesn't quite have the Apple polish, but it all works and it's nice to be able to run things in the background. I used the navigation for the first time yesterday, and it got me (somewhat ironically) to the dealer to whom I sold my car, thereby working itself out of a job.
As far as I can tell the bottom line is this: Droid has a better network, while iPhone has better apps. Pick which matters more to you, and you know what to get.
Heh, Scott sure sounds bitter, doesn't he? "Kudos to Dan for being able to overlook something this important."
Anyhow, I'm also of the opinion that a phone is really about the network. My coworkers will go on and on about their beloved iPhones, and yet they can't even place a phone call from within the same building where my $60 Verizon handset has no trouble whatsoever.
I second this. I am a new droid user, and downtown chicago verizon beats atnt thoroughly.
Unfortunately, bejewelled is available on android as well.
An interesting event happend the other day. I downloaded the shopsavy application, and with it was apparently a fix to a camera problem that did bad focus on days where milliseconds overflowed a signed field, so for 24 days or so the focus mechanism was broken, the it was fine for the same interval. The download carried with it a fix to this problem.
I admit not being an iphone user before, so I can't offer a comparison.
Consumers have had to put up with phone/network couplings for too long. What can realistically be done to break this (or any monopoly), aside from moving to Europe?