While traveling in Australia, the data roaming plan that I added to my account simply stopped working. This became annoying since there isn't ubiquitous wifi in Australia like in the States, and I really wanted to keep up with things at home (like, my family) while I was out and about.

The following is the conversation I had with the representative in trying to get my iPhone to connect to the internet via 3g

Thank you for choosing AT&T International Care a representative will be with you shortly. Please note: Protecting your personal information is one of our highest priorities; hence, you will be required to provide account related information to ensure whom we are working with. Data encryption is also enabled to protect your personal information during this chat session. For more information please go to http://www.wireless.att.com/privacy/ or http://www.att.com/privacy/. Please wait for a site operator to respond.
All representatives are currently assisting others. Your estimated wait time is 0 minutes and 1 seconds. Thanks for your patience.
You are now chatting with Virginia Embrey.
Virginia Embrey: Hello! My name is Virginia Embrey and I am an International Care Representative. I’m reading your inquiry and I will be right with you.
Owen Winkler: Ok.
Virginia Embrey: I will be happy to assist you and I apologize for any inconvenience this may have caused you.
Owen Winkler: Ok. What do we need to do?
Virginia Embrey: For security purposes, would you provide me with the last four digits of the social security number on the account ?
Owen Winkler: ****
Virginia Embrey: Thank you, one moment while I review your account.
Virginia Embrey: Does it have 3G on the phone right now?
Owen Winkler: It does.
Virginia Embrey: Can you access the internet at all?
Owen Winkler: If I turn on the Wi-Fi connection and am in range of a wifi netowrk, yes.
Owen Winkler: But I cannot access data over 3G.
Virginia Embrey: What carrier is listed on the phone?
Owen Winkler: "OPTUS"
Virginia Embrey: Can you go to settings, then Carriers
Virginia Embrey: Phone will search for other carriers, let me know what other carriers comes up.
Owen Winkler: YES OPTUS, codafone AU, Telstra Mobile, 3TELSTRA, 50516
Owen Winkler: Sorry, "vodafone AU". Typo.
Virginia Embrey: That's Okay.
Virginia Embrey: Select Telstra
Owen Winkler: Telstra Mobile or 3TELSTRA?
Virginia Embrey: Telstra Mobile
Owen Winkler: It gave a brief error "A data connection is not currently allowed". When I tried to refresh the page (in mobile safari), it is not connecting.
Owen Winkler: Yes, the iPhone eventually times out, saying that it is not connected to the internet.
Virginia Embrey: lets try 3telstra
Owen Winkler: Ok, this will take a moment. Incidentally, I tried many of these before, and they did about the same thing. I do not expect selecting 3TELSTRA to work, but will try now.
Owen Winkler: "Your selected cellular network is no longer available. You can choose a different network in Settings."
Owen Winkler: The carrier in the top corner shows "No Service".
Virginia Embrey: Before we do anything else, lets reset the network.
Virginia Embrey: Select Settings, general, reset, reset network settings.
Owen Winkler: Ok, there is an apple with a progress bar.
Virginia Embrey: Thank you for the information,
Owen Winkler: It's been sitting there with just the apple on it for a long time now. Should this take very long?
Virginia Embrey: Sometimes, lets wait a little while longer.
Owen Winkler: This trip is a business trip for me, and with my limited personal time here, I'm troubleshooting this issue, and now nervous about making the other features of my phone (like those that are my primary source of my travel details) non-functional. Please bear in mind that my visiting a service location while abroad and away from my backups at home is really not an option. The apple is still on the screen.
Virginia Embrey: This is only resetting the network not the phone.
Owen Winkler: Ok. Still nervous.
Virginia Embrey: I understand.
Owen Winkler: It went off for a moment, then came back on. Not sure that this is useful information, but it has now done that twice.
Virginia Embrey: Okay.
Virginia Embrey: Is the apple still on the screen?
Owen Winkler: Indeed, it is.
Owen Winkler: It blinked off and came back with the apple again.
Virginia Embrey: I'll be right with you.
Virginia Embrey: Thank you for waiting. I'll be with you in just a moment.
Virginia Embrey: Do you have the phone plugged into a USB right now?
Owen Winkler: No.
Virginia Embrey: Can you press the home button and the power button at the same time until the apple symbol comes up.
Owen Winkler: Ok. I did that.
Virginia Embrey: let me know what happens.
Owen Winkler: It's just sitting there with the apple on it.
Virginia Embrey: I'm sorry for the delay. I'll be right with you.
Owen Winkler: It continues to display only the apple. I should note that it has never taken this long for any kind of reset, although I've never reset my phone in Australia, only in America.
Virginia Embrey: Sorry, I'm still here.
Virginia Embrey: I agree it normally never takes this long.
Virginia Embrey: How many signal bars do you have?
Owen Winkler: I see only an apple. There are no signal bars.
Virginia Embrey: Do you remember how many you had before?
Owen Winkler: It varied, but I had no trouble sending and receiving text messages.
Owen Winkler: At this point, I would be pleased if I could restore the prior poor (phone only, no data) performance of the phone, since it was at least useful via wifi and had apps (and my return travel itinerary) available. At this point, I would be pleased if I had no phone service and only wifi capability, really.
Owen Winkler: Because the phone is currently non-functional, and I have nearly reached the end of time I have available this evening to troubleshoot this.
Virginia Embrey: Since a normal reset does not take this long it leads me to believe that there might be an issue with the device itself.
Owen Winkler: Well, until I reset it, everything was working fine except for data. I'm not sure what leads to that conclusion.
Virginia Embrey: Because the phone is not resetting it keeps getting stuck at the apple screen. The normal reset should show the apple then turn off and then on again, takes normally about 2-3 minutes tops.
Owen Winkler: Well. I'm not sure what I'm expected to say to that.
Virginia Embrey: Can you press the home button and the power button at the same time one more time, and make sure you hold the buttons down for at least 10 seconds until the apple symbol comes up.
Owen Winkler: I held the buttons for 14 seconds. It toggled back and forth between black and apple screens twice during that time. The apple is currently on-screen.
Owen Winkler: Still showing the apple.
Owen Winkler: The screen went off again and is now showing the apple again, just like before.
Owen Winkler: Calls, apps, wifi, and texts were working fine prior to the reset, and now I have a non-functional phone, literally more than 10000 miles from home. I must say, this wasn't exactly what I was expecting when I started this conversation. I was thinking that it might just be a toggle that wasn't set properly in the change of my plan or something, since data was working properly on Monday. Oh well.
Owen Winkler: Heh. Nevermind the photos I've taken which are likely locked inside this thing now. Lovely.
Virginia Embrey: If you press only the power button does it go back to the apple screen as well?
Owen Winkler: If i hold the power button, nothing happens. The apple stays on-screen. I held it for 20 seconds.
Virginia Embrey: Thank you for waiting. I'll be with you in just a moment.
Virginia Embrey: I apologize for this inconvenience, but nothing that we did today would've done this to your phone unless there was an issue with the device and not just that you weren't receiving your data.
Owen Winkler: I don't believe that. I believe that you told me to do something that may have worked within presence of my primary carrier, but not while on roaming networks. Be that as it may, this has taken entirely too long to do, and has resulted completely unsatisfactorily. But I'm completely at your mercy as to what to do next.
Owen Winkler: Is there a chance the phone may boot without the sim card installed?
Virginia Embrey: Our departments deal with roaming customers and by resetting the network it does not affect your device in this way if there wasn't a problem with the device to begin with.
Virginia Embrey: Do you have the usb cable with you?
Owen Winkler: I do.
Virginia Embrey: Takin out the sim card will actually do nothing.
Owen Winkler: What should I do with the USB cable?
Virginia Embrey: Can you attempt to charge the phone and see what it does.
Virginia Embrey: With either the uSB or an travel charger.
Owen Winkler: Providing power via USB produces no change on the phone.
Owen Winkler: This, incidentally, was not the case moments prior to this conversation.
Virginia Embrey: I'm sorry for the delay. I'll be right with you.
Virginia Embrey: I'll be right with you.
Virginia Embrey: Give me a moment, I'm contacting another dept for other options.
Virginia Embrey: I have not heard from you for a few moments. Are you still with me?
Owen Winkler: I don't have a thing that periodically sends canned responses when I'm doing other things, so you'll just have to take for granted that I'll tell you when I've left.
Virginia Embrey: I'll be right with you.
Virginia Embrey: Thank you for waiting. I'll be with you in just a moment.
Owen Winkler: This apple is very stylish. Not as functional as most apps, but I might be able to get used to having just a photo of this logo as my only functionality.
Virginia Embrey: I'm sorry for the delay. I'll be right with you.
Owen Winkler: Earlier today I was eating fish and chips on a beach, looking out over the Southern Ocean. If I took a boat in the direction I was looking, the first landmass I would have encountered would be Antarctica.
Owen Winkler: I tried to send a photo of that to my kids, alas...
Owen Winkler: Don't mind me, I'm just waiting.
Virginia Embrey: Thank you for holding, unfortunately I do not have any other troubleshooting steps to do.
Owen Winkler: Ok. What do I do next?
Owen Winkler: Assume the phone is damaged. I don't believe it is, but assuming that's the case, what do I do now?
Virginia Embrey: The last step is to set your phone to DFU Mode
Owen Winkler: What can I do from DFU mode?
Virginia Embrey: DFU Mode resets your phone to Factory settings.
Owen Winkler: Interesting logic here: If I reset my phone to factory settings and it works, then the phone wasn't actually broken at all, and resetting it was a fool's errand.
Virginia Embrey: We did not reset the phone, we reset the network
Owen Winkler: No, I'm just saying... If I do reset it now, and after I reset it the phone works properly... Nevermind. How do I factory reset from DFU mode?
Virginia Embrey: You will need to contact our technical support department or Apple Care for Assistance for more details
Owen Winkler: Ok, so basically the verdict is no cell phone for the next week in Australia?
Owen Winkler: Wait. I'm not already talking to technical support?
Virginia Embrey: No, This is International Tech Support, You would need to Speak to Domestic Device Technical Support.
Owen Winkler: I'm not entirely sure how to respond to that.
Virginia Embrey: I apologize for this inconvenience, was there any thing else that I may assist you with today?
Owen Winkler: Ok. This has been an experience. I'm sure that people say this all the time, but after being basically stranded in a foreign country by your company, I'm pretty sure I'm going to switch to Verizon when I return to the States. And although I doubt this matters much to AT&T in the overall scheme of things, I just wanted you to be sure to pass that on to whoever might want to hear it, because I'm surly posting this whole conversation to everyone I know.
Owen Winkler: So yes, that's the last thing you can help me with. Pass on this log to your supervisor, and I can go watch TV on my last free day here instead of going out to see a band because you took so long between responses.
Virginia Embrey: I'm sorry I wasn't able to resolve your issue.
Owen Winkler: I'm sorry you actually made it *worse*.
Virginia Embrey: I'm sorry for the delay. I'll be right with you.
Owen Winkler: Lovely. Ok. Have a fantastic day!
Owen Winkler: I'm leaving now, in case the automated system wanted to know.
Virginia Embrey: You do the same.
Virginia Embrey: Thank you for choosing AT&T. Have a wonderful day.
Virginia Embrey: if you need to speak to an International Care Representative you can always chat with us again. You can also send us an email by logging onto your online account at att.com/mywireless >contact us. Or you can reach us by dialing +1-916-843-4685 while you are outside of the country.
Virginia Embrey: Thank you for chatting with us. We value your feedback. Please click the CLOSE button at top right to answer a few questions about your experience with us today. Thank you for choosing AT&T.

Anyway, if anyone at home is reading this, yes, my phone is completely dead. I have a couple of things left to try that are smarter than the average user, but if I wasn't me, but just a regular traveler no friends at my destination, I'd be pretty royally screwed right now.

But no worries. Everything's fine. I hope to have this resolved by tomorrow, and am going to relax and remember the day's otherwise fantastic events (as described in the above to poor Ginny).

I've been reading a lot about the Palm Pre for the past few months. Let me say that a different way: I've been reading a lot about the Palm Pre for the past few months. As last week wound to a close, I started dreaming about the Pre, waking up in a sweat because my dreams had me stepping to the counter at the Sprint store after waiting in line for days only to find that they had just run out of stock. It was a terrible bit of business, but that's all over now.

What's been bugging me about all of the reviews I've read lately is that they have a particular character that I find suspect. There are several types, but most of the reviews I've read have a large subset of a particular set of traits.

• They're a gizmo uberblog that cares more about eyeballs on their ads than real reviews.
• They aren't ever going to be users of the device themselves.
• If they are going to use the device themselves, they already think it's the best thing ever invented.
• They already are so attached to some other device, that anything released must be compared to it incessantly, usually as something inferior.

The Inevitable iPhone Comparison

So yeah, I'm tired of the comparisons to the iPhone. The iPhone is cool, and I have an iPod Touch, and all of my friends have one, so I know. But there are things I don't like about the iPhone to start with: AT&T. The on-screen keyboard. Single-tasking. iTunes.

It you want to compare, uh, apples to apples, you have to take a look at adjusted numbers. For example, Apple is quick to tout the obscene number of iPhone apps that are available. But when the iPhone was released, there weren't as many. Actually, there were none. So the Pre is already ahead of the iPhone in that respect. Weird, straight-up statistics like that need to be questioned. Anyone who's just taking them at face value is an irredeemable Apple fanboy. More power to you.

Really, I don't care whether the Pre is an "iPhone killer". Each device does good things. I just want the Pre to be satisfying for me.

Plan of Attack

On Saturday morning, I got up at 5:50am to trudge to the mall for my Pre. I had staked out the Sprint store the day before, learning the closest mall entrance and the time the doors opened for the mall walkers. This last bit of info was essential, since although the Sprint store opened at 8am before the mall itself at 10am, the mall always opens its doors at 7am for the mall walkers.

Actually, a little investigation said that it would be open somewhat earlier than that. But since the Sprint folks were telling 7am to anyone who did ask the correct question, my extra information got be the jump on everyone. I was at the mall at 6:45am, and first in line by 15 minutes.

It took an hour to process my sale of two Pres through their computer system. This was due to my strange existing Sprint account (for my air card), the burden on the system from "Pre Day", and the confusion of the guy running the system. The clerk next to him rung out three people while I waited.

Anyway, I was happy to walk out of the store at 9am with my two boxes.

Comparison Suffering

What you need to understand is that I've been using a Windows Mobile device for the past two years. This is perhaps why the comparison to the iPhone isn't very relevant to me. The Pre compared to my T-Mobile Wing is like getting fed grapes and being fanned with (er) palm fronds versus being whipped while pushing marble blocks to the pyramid.

The only thing actually better about the Wing compared to the Pre is the keyboard, and even then not by much. Heck, the Pre's keyboard actually has a dollar sign on it, which is nowhere on my Windows Mobile phone. If you're used to the Treo keys though, (my last phone was a Treo, so I am) then it's no big deal.

Here's a killer fact: My Sprint contract for two Pres is less per month than my T-Mobile contract for the two Windows Mobile phones. What's that all about?

What's Not To Like?

I hate to start this way, because it feels like the other reviewers pan the Pre after having only used it for an hour, but my concerns are more long-term. Rather than complaining about stupid crap like "not as responsive as I'd hoped" (What? You're crazy!) and "light plastic feel" (oh no, I don't need to carry a brick in my pocket!), I'm going to talk about a few things that just strike me as a little odd from the point of view of someone who's actually locked into using this thing for two years.

First, the calendar. The calendar sync is absolutely great. I've already used it with Berta to great effect. I add an appointment and it automatically goes to Google. We're sharing that calendar, so it automatically shows up on her phone. It's genius and it just works. Er. Most of the time.

Actually, with our shared calendars, it always works. What's not working for me is my work's Google calendar. I admit, I have a lot of calendars for work (11), but it just chokes the phone. I'm not sure if it's because I can't edit all the calendars or what. When I add my work account to the phone, it stops displaying events in day view altogether. The only remedy is to remove my work account from the phone, then everything goes back to flawless.

Ok, almost flawless. Some of the interface choices are strange. First, there's no way to see all-day events on the month view. For timed events, it marks off the times of day in the square of that day in the month's calendar. But the all-day events don't appear there at all. It makes it really hard to see birthdays, holidays, or days that are marked for an event without a time. They show on the week and day views ok.

Another weird thing is the coloring. I don't understand why the colors only appear in the month view when you specifically select one from the dropdown. The month view will either show gray reserved times, or gray reserved times for everything but the one color you've selected.

Both of these issues are minor and can be corrected in software. It seems to me that an all-day event in month view should maybe have a dark square highlight on the inside edge of the day box. All of the events should be colored all the time, until you select a calendar from the dropdown, and then it should shade them all gray except for that calendar. These seem like minor issues.

Services

Of course, the problem with making a phone that intrinsically connects to other services for data is that there are always more services that you don't connect to. A prime example is that because we're all Windows users at home, we started using Microsoft's Live for calendaring. It integrates well with some other stuff, and really, I like its interface better than Google Calendar. But the Pre doesn't support that.

Another thing the Pre doesn't support is Flickr. That's a killer for me. I don't use Facebook or Photobucket (??) for photo storage, so those aren't ideal. But I do use Flickr, and so it would be great to send photos there when I take them with the phone. Yeah, I can send it to Flickr by email, but a direct button like the other services would be slick.

Did I mention that the camera on the Pre kicks butt? And the flash, although small and insignificant-looking, actually does improve the photo. You wouldn't think so. On most other phones I've seen with a flash, the flash is almost the brightness of a squashed firefly. The Pre's actually lights some stuff up.

Battery and USB

The battery life of the Pre is notoriously not good. Everyone's been saying so. As they say, it's a lousy 5 hours of talk time. Wait. Five hours? I hardly ever talk on my cell. 5 hours is plenty. But the problem is that the Pre is always online, and that's a battery drain.

I've read a few things that tell you some things you can do to improve your battery life. Turning off the IM service seems like a good idea. I don't need to be always available via IM. Still, these are once again things that can improve via software. So they don't bother me as much as something that isn't going to change about the hardware -- like the USB port.

The USB port on the Pre makes me really sad. It's some kind of "micro USB" port. It doesn't look like any other USB connector I've ever seen. It's hard to fit into the Pre, too, because the cover is very form-fitting. I can't wait to get the Touchstone I ordered to have some inductive charging, but moving files between the Pre and the PC is always going to be tough if I have to do it via that USB connection.

Hopefully, an app comes out that lets me move files to and from a Pre over my wireless network. That seems like a simple software solution. SMB file access would be awesome, and would let me get to all of my music and video on the network, avoiding USB completely.

Other Junk

I was showing Nana the phone the other day, trying to explain what's so cool about it. I showed her the Google Maps application, and we looked at our house from space. Then I pulled up the turn-by-turn directions to get from our house to hers, and it started giving us voice directions. She liked that. And considering my previous phone didn't have real GPS, I did too.

In the background, I was streaming music from my Ok Go channel on Pandora. (A last.fm app would be awesome!)

The notification system is amazing. It's hard to convey "wow factor", but whenever an event happens in the system - a new SMS or email message, music playback, new twitter reply, whatever - the area at the bottom of the screen slides up a bit and the message appears. After a few seconds, it shrinks back down into a little icon. You can tap the notice to go directly to the application that generated the event, or the icon to pop up the notification. If you swipe the notification off the screen, it just clears it. It doesn't delete your message, it just dismisses the notice. Also, you can completely ignore the notices and continue whatever you were doing without interruption. This is really cool.

One thing I'm still not clear on is how to adjust the volume of things. There is a rocker on the side of the Pre, and I can use that to change the playback audio volume of the device, but I'm not sure if that will also control the ringer or what. I did notice that there is an easy-access "silence mode" switch on the top of the Pre, which is useful for quiet places.

Closing applications is a little odd. First you have to switch to card view, then you have to fling the app's card off the screen. I think I would like a gesture that lets me fling an app off the screen directly. Also, I don't know what the little button in the gesture area of the Pre is for. Rather, I don't know why it's there. I avoid using it, instead dragging up shortly from the center of the gesture area to the screen to see the card view.

I like the little things. I noticed today that the screen turns off when you're talking on the phone. Then when you lower the phone away from your head, it turns back on. I'm guessing this also disables the touch screen so your face doesn't push any buttons. Seems obvious, but this nicety doesn't happen on the Wing.

Sure, the app catalog is small today, but the old Palm OS had plenty of applications that made it a good productivity phone. That's not to say that I don't appreciate the occasional game, just that my phone isn't my primary game system, so I'll mostly be happy with what I get. Super Monkey Ball was neat when I first played it, and then I never touched it. The games that I like most on the Touch are stupid little one-offs that are almost more easily done in HTML, javascript, and canvas -- this is something that the Pre should handle easily.

And if the Pre gets Flash, it's a whole different ballgame...

What other applications I'd really like to see sooner rather than later is this small list:

• SlingPlayer
• EverNote
• last.fm
• Some synergy-connected to-do/project tracking app (that's not RTM)
• Some kind of tower defense game

In Conclusion

So what if the 8GB iPhone is $99. Who wouldn't have a little buyer's remorse at that news, right?

Nonetheless, I don't feel the need to defend my choice. The Pre is a nice solid product, with some admitted glitches out of the gate. I'm confident that these software issues will be addressed as people start using the phone and providing feedback to Palm and Sprint on their usage of this cool little device.

Skippy posted about how his boss may get his department iPhones, and he wrote about how he thinks he may decline the offer for several good reasons.

I too, am impressed at first glance by the interface of the iPhone, but I think it's like the iPod - Apple's sheen veneer on a device that could stand a touch more practicality.

Some of the basic features are interesting. I would really like to have a MP3 and DivX player built into my phone with space to hold a decent amount of stuff (using a hard drive, not just flash). But there are way too many downsides to the iPhone:

• Apple's DRM policies. When I buy a license to listen to music, I want to be able to listen to it wherever I please from whatever medium I choose. This is not the case with most iTunes Music Store purchases, the primary supposed source for iPod/iPhone music.
• The proprietary hardware connector. Maybe it seems silly, but perhaps you do not have the array of hardware I have. Finding the special connector for a device when it becomes misplaced is a real pain. If everything used USB, my world would be much, much simpler.
• iTunes. There are many practical dislike I have for iTunes, but I'll choose to say that it's the chrome on the window (the Mac-like skin) that really pisses me off. Let's not waste all my CPU cycles to display a completely unnecessary window border, please.
• Lack of format support (OGG, DivX). I've got a lot of DivX movies. Can I play them?
• Lack of developer support for hardware. I enjoy a thriving developer environment with my Treo. In fact, I have even written my own software for the Palm using OrbWorks. All I can do for the iPhone is write web pages? Maybe a developer API will come out eventually, but Apple hardware isn't well known for its development tools.
• Locked into one of the lousiest cell networks for two years. I used to have Cellular One, which through a series of many mergers eventually became Cingular/AT&T. They sucked. And although it's the oldest cell network in this area, it's the oldest cell network in this area. So long reliability!

And no DUN profile for bluetooth? That's a complete deal-breaker for me and likely for anyone serious about mobile connectivity. On my list of things that my next phone must be able to do, this one is in the top three. It's the primary reason I don't already have a Helio Ocean. Seriously, $600 for a phone with missing and crippled features? I don't think so.

The touchscreen-only operation of the iPhone seems pretty neat, but from the point of view of someone who owned one of the early Pronto remotes that was entirely touchscreen, I can tell you that it's not all that. I really like the tactile response. I'm not sure why people never seem to get over the cool factor of the inductive scroll wheel on the iPod. I can only think it's a matter of time before people catch on that the emporer has no clothes, yet I'm shocked that people haven't caught on to the iPod ruse by now. It's got to be a byproduct of Apple worship.

My subscription period for my Verizon phone has come to an end. I've had my Treo for 2 years and it has served me well, but I'm wondering what I'm going to do next.

I've been paying Verizon the extra money for unlimited broadband access. The sad part is that my Treo is only a 650, and can't take advantage of the high speed access that I'm paying way too much for. It's gotten me thinking about what I'm really getting out of my cell phone and phone service.

What do I really use my phone for besides making calls? Well, I do use it as a contact database. I have all of my phone numbers and addresses in the Palm's address book. (Actually, I use Agendus, but same difference.) I use it as a calculator. I play games on it when I've got time to kill and nothing else to do. I watch movies on it using TCPMP, since Treos can't do VCast or any of that fancy network-provided stuff. I use the phone to get movie times via the built-in web browser, and send SMS to Google to get local addresses.

What would I like the phone to do that it doesn't already? I would like the phone to take better pictures so I could go on impromptu weekend excursions without having to remember the camera. I do use the internet access, but I really wish it was faster. Having GPS features would alleviate that infrequent but periodic need to know where I'm going when I don't know where I am. I would really like to have internal, iPod-like storage.

Finally, the network pricetag for the services I'm using is outrageous. Other networks are much cheaper, and just as prevalent in this area.

I could wait for the iPhone, but I won't. It's a long story, but to summarize: I have a work project that involves video podcasts, so I've been loaned a video iPod. I can't get the blasted thing to work the way it's supposed to -- it constantly needs reset. If the performance of the iPod translates into iPhone performance (something I can't afford to not have working right) then I have no interest.

Berta seems pretty attached to her Palm-based phone. I don't know that she'd want to switch to something else, but I'm considering it.

The Helio Ocean, which isn't out yet, looks like a really nice phone. I haven't been able to determine if the Bluetooth it has includes a Dial-up Networking profile, but if it does, then I think it fulfills many of my requirements. What's particularly nice is that it would be a 3G phone on an unlimited high-speed network for about $60 monthly. I would be able to be online via my notebook wherever I had phone service, which is basically Sprint's coverage area.

The phone itself looks pretty slick, too, from the reviews I've read: 2.0 megapixel camera with flash. A full slide-out keyboard. Connects with many instant messaging systems. Plays movies from miniSD memory.

This whole phone/network search is frustrating. It's as if the industry knows exactly what I want and is doing their best to dance around those specific features.

We'll probably just renew with Verizon, but spending $300 to upgrade to a phone that makes use of a service that we pay an extra $50/month for seems like a good catalyst for switching to a service that charges a flat monthly rate of $60 for unlimited internet and whose phones can be had for less than $295.