posted on 15.07.10 My iPhone 4 Story

I was one of the hopeful and anxious fanboys who was up at 3am on June 15th trying to press their way through Apple’s pre-order process. With no luck by 4am I decided to try again in the morning. I arrived at a local AT&T store for their opening time of 10am. There were a few people waiting outside playing with their iPhone 3G’s and 3GS’s pretending like they were the only ones there for the iPhone 4. So after I checked in with Foursquare letting the world know where I was the doors opened. A lined formed. The first order didn’t even go through. They switched to paper order forms, I was having none of that and left.  

The horrors of AT&T’s servers crashed both their site and Apple’s site all day. Finally at 4pm EST I headed back to the AT&T Store that had failed me in the morning. I successfully placed my order for a 32GB iPhone 4. 

I got home and got my iPhone 4 order confirmation email from AT&T. I was happy. But then I was nervous. I had read many reports online of people having their AT&T order cancelled on them or not receiving their iPhones on the day of launch. I would be horrified if I didn’t receive my iPhone 4 on June 24th. So i checked my email hourly on my slow iPhone 3G(gross.) for an email from AT&T letting me know it shipped. I got nothing until the 23rd.

Luckily on the 24th my iPhone 4 was delivered by UPS in typical UPS terrible packaging. the iPhone 4 box in a bigger box that had the iPhone 4 box just moving freely within the bigger box, exactly what I want for my $300 purchase. 

Well all-in-all I love this phone, but there are some issues. Firstly the death grip(even though I hate that name) is a problem that needs to be fixed. A case does fix everything, and hopefully it’s software related but I doubt it. 

I have the phone, I use it everyday, it’s still better than any Droid phone out there by far, and the UI is unbeatable. So am I happy with my purchase of the best that money can buy? Yes. 

posted on 01.07.10 iPhone 4 Insurance.

I‘m sure many of you who just got a shiny new iPhone 4 from Apple within the last week are worried about the safety of their new expensive purchase. Well I was too, that’s why i started looking for an iPhone insurance plan. Since AT&T doesn’t offer an insurance plan for the iPhone yet I had to turn to third-party insurance plans. 

Gizmodo had a recent article with an awesome comparison chart of the available insurance option for the iPhone. 

As you can see there isn’t much to choose from. to me there are only two option on this chart. MobileProtect and SquareTrade.

  • MobileProtect which is $12/mo and a $199 deductible for the iPhone 4 is powered by Asurion, a very well-known and trusted insurance provider for technology. This provider 
  • SquareTrade which is a one time fee of $99(on sale for limited time normally $124) and a $50 deductible. Which is a very fair price. The only downside i can see to SquareTrade is that it does not cover theft or loss, only damage to the iPhone. Whereas MobileProtect covers all basis; loss, damage, theft, water damage and out of warranty repair. 

So which did I go with? MobileProtect by Asurion of course. I know that it is quite a bit more money, but the protection is greater and the name brand is safer in my eyes. Being a college student my iPhone 4 is bound to get lost, stolen, or dipped in a cup of beer. I need the full protection. 

I cannot begin to tell you the piece of mind that you will receive once you have your precious iPhone 4 insured.