connecting*the*dots

Look, I want the iPhone (more accurately, I want to give up my Treo 650), but there’s no way I can justify spending $500 on this beauty until these three features — in the very least — are added in a next generation:

• A tactile qwerty keyboard: I cannot go backwards in text messaging functionality, which is the definition of touchscreen qwerty. No way, Jose.
• Real battery life: My iPod battery died after less than a year and it never played for more than a few hours in the first place. The Treo 650 specs show 6hrs talk time and 300 hours standby (both are accurate from my experience); the iPhone specs are up to 5hrs talk, browse or video and up to 6hrs audio. If I’m buying this for its multi-functionality — essentially giving up my other gadgets — then those figures are completely unacceptable.
• More Gigs: Again, if this is to replace my iPod, 4gig and 8gig models are pretty weak options. Direct market me once you pass the 20gig threshold.

See you in a few years, baby.

I’ve got one bullet left in the chamber, so this had better work.

This is a pissed-off customer rant. Proceed with caution.

To make a very long, frustrating story as short as possible, I lost every contact from my Treo 600 added over the past 5 months. There was some kind of a sync corruption that actually busted my phone — turning it off when receiving incoming calls from non-Sprint networks.

The same thing happened last December and the local Sprint store gave me a substitute 600, which worked fine until I tried to sync it this past week.

After it busted on Thursday while I tried to sync up my new contacts from last week’s Beyond Broadcast conference, I spent a good deal of time on Friday, Saturday and today in the local Sprint store, with the culmination of the first two days having me walk out of the store with a “reset” phone.

Today, I skipped the pleasantries. Within minutes I was vociferously arguing that they needed to make me happy or I was going to cut my contract. After 3 hours in the store this afternoon and speaking to what seemed to be the entire corporate ladder to approve a buyout of my contract termination fee, the store manager finally worked out a deal with me to receive a free 650 upgrade.

Fine.

But what a God awful, painful process to get there.

Even though it was obvious to everyone I spoke with that my phone kept busting/erasing data during the Palm sync process, they wanted nothing to do with my sync log sheet. Both their internal tech folk and the folk on the other end of the phone, kept recommending a reset of my phone, which had already been proved to be a useless approach. At one point, the manager started to lean towards it being a network issue or an issue with my computer… something they could do nothing about; you know, “time to go home Mr. Coon and search the web for answers”… Well, that’s when I lost it, diving into a tirade how:

• I’m locked into a two-year contract with Sprint (like the rest of the cellphone customers of the world!)
• They branded my Treo 600, so I can’t use it with another carrier (therefore I’m holding you responsible for *any* problems. Screw hunting down Treo or Palm or Mac tech support!)
• I’m standing in their brick and mortar customer touch point (and you can’t help me!? wtf!)

I couldn’t help it, I got Jersey on their asses. And that must’ve been the language they understood.

So yeah, the long-story short is that I now have a new Treo 650… and a new 2-year contract. Fuckers.

Prepare yourself for my soon-to-be-written email asking for your contact information… again.

/end rant

UPDATE: My new 650 is working like a charm. Next time Sprint folks, just give a seven year-long customer with an unfixable problem a free upgrade. It’s good business.