Crash and Burn-Android dies hard.

Well, my Android experiment crashed HARD today.

The kids were out on the town with their Grandma, celebrating the last day of winter break, when I realized that half the kitchen was a total dead zone for the mytouch. The kitchen is where I live. Every minute of every day. The Blackberry connected over UMA, (and the fact that I KNOW that is a testament to the fact that I listen when my husband talks.) Yay me!

Well, anyway, I was considering some snack foods as MissAngelBaby and I are alone for dinner and I see no need to add to the dish pile, when I got a picture of a beautiful ball of chocolate bread dough via MMS. And couldn't respond. And couldn't find signal. And felt my heart beating faster and faster...What if there's an accident? What if the kids need me? What if I want to bake -forget that I swore off it for New Years- and the babies can't get a hold of me? What if...

Three seconds later I had my Blackberry gutted and was forcing the battery door off of the mytouch. I should have waited, because the battery was dead on the blackberry and it evidently needed a little coaxing to restart... some of the applications were expressing their displeasure and needed to reconfigure their software. At this point I'm REALLY panicking... I was at the very least, without a phone for FIFTEEN WHOLE MINUTES! Do you KNOW what can happen in fifteen minutes? Considering the gash on my kid's chin took all of a half a second, I'm fairly sure the world could actually END in fifteen minutes.

I'm breathing again. Slowly. Everyone is okay. I got the obligatory "We're on our way now" text without a bump.
 
I really did hate the mytouch, though, and to be fair, it wasn't totally its fault. It's a nice phone. In order to encourage you to "play" with it, T-mobile didn't include much in the way of instructions. The blackberry comes with a manual that rivals the Bible in wordiness. That's a really comfortable place for me...following the manual.

I like instructions. Hence, my cooking addiction.

Instructions.

I HATED not having a key board. And one of the big reasons I wanted to try the Android was the Angry Birds game, which caused my phone to give me a giant black screen of death five times. I want to kill pigs, dammit. They're such smug little suckers. That game works better on a newer version of Android.

The amount of applications available to the mytouch is simply astounding. I went to download a twitter app and found that there were no less than seven. SEVEN just for twitter. My favorite was the tweetdeck, which combines your facebook and and twitter accounts, and you can slide between the two screens. I'm ashamed to say I spent several minutes sliding screens back and forth going "ooohhh" Yeah, that's super nice. Loved it.

I couldn't figure out how to access the camera. And to add insult to injury, my three year old had picked up the interloper and in two seconds was taking pictures. I know, she's smarter than me, I'm okay with that.

I could literally have spent DAYS in the Android market place. Days on end. For years. I predict much less nagging at my husband as I watch him slide his screens around.  It's a pleasant distraction. Really freaking cool, but the phone itself isn't a great fit for my personality. I want a phone that functions easily as a phone. Maybe it was lack of habit, but I had a mental breakdown every time I went to answer that thing.

And it had a TRACK BALL. I gave that crap up for lent years ago...only to find myself more likely to use the track ball than the touch screen out of habit. The 9700 has the track pad, which is nice and doesn't gum up.

So, the moral of the story is, do some research before you buy a phone and blame the phone for not working for you. There was no way I was going to be able to give the mytouch a fair shake, and I really did know in advance that I have to be able to connect over the UMA here. When you are a professional mommy, you need to be able to be accessed at all times. It's more important than being a doctor- they can always call another doctor, but you are the only mommy the kids get. So accessibility is key, and I have managed to insert myself and entire family in the middle of nowhere, yet still right in the middle of a small town. It's the best of both worlds, unless you are talking cell phone coverage. But again, I know that, so who's to blame? Is it the phone? No, it's me, the willfully uneducated consumer, who got bored with Old Faithful.

Sometimes, you shouldn't cheat on what works.

Does Android Suck? Blackberry versus Android in an Epic Steel Cage Match

So, I'm a little jealous of my husband's new G2.

It's shiny, it's new, it's got a GIANT touch screen, and it plays youtube videos. WELL.  I have the Blackberry Bold 9700, a decidedly unfeminine phone, but I LOVE it. Specifically, the fact that the email service is faster than lightning and as reliable as old faithful.

Y-A-W-N. There are some fun new apps, really, but nothing so nice as the android market. I've been a blackberry girl since the moment I laid eyes on my husband's shiny new Pearl two and half years ago, as I looked at my own red and black Nokia in dismay. His smartphone was...smart. My Nokia was...dumb as a box of rocks.

I'm just not a tech girl. Not big on change, either. When my husband rooted the mytouch for the first time, I was pissed beyond belief. Mostly because I tried to text him and the software, well, it didn't like to text.

Um. Okay. I was officially the most nerdy wife on the planet, and I'm fairly sure he was the most annoying husband. (love you, dear.) The amount of fights that ensued over rooted phones and new software could probably set a record for most fights ever over the stupidest shit.

So, I'm going to, over the next week if I can't hack it and over the next month if I can, give you a bit of insight as to how the two different phones enhance the professional mommying. I'm loving the different apps on the android market of course. Right away I found an app that works with my calorie counting website, SparkPeople, but I can't figure out how to use it. And I've forced the thing to shut down twice in the hour I've had it in my hands...(this one has NOT been rooted.) So, I'm not loving that. And it's slow as fucking molasses. I just have to swear there, because, well, my blackberry never bogged down. Not even one time. I'm sure I'm lying here, as I'm homesick already for the dinging of my Blackberry email, and this mytouch 3g, in phone years, it's older than God. Almost a whole year already, it's practically a dinosaur. But, it's only a month older than my Blackberry, so one would think it would function almost as well.

Maybe I should give up here. I'm clearly biased in favor of the Blackberry. I'm mad because Angry Birds shut my new-ish test Android down. Maybe I should declare the Blackberry the victor, hand the Android reigns back to my husband, and never cheat on RIM again. Who knows, I'll sleep on it, and hope the MyTouch gives me something other than a black screen of death next time I pick it up.

It may be my impatient tapping on the screen that shut it down, I'm not sure.

This is going to be an epic train wreck. Wish me luck.

P.S. I want my keyboard back.
P.P.S. How do I take a picture with this thing? There's a button on the Blackberry. Where's the G* D* Camera button?