It HAS to be a Phone

| Making “The Big Change” – Again, E3

My Photon Q's First Snapshot

I unboxed the phone Tuesday night; performed the requisite 3 hour charge; followed on-screen instructions to activate (the financial stuff comes with the registration/buying the phone) - so a relatively painless and quick task. I chose to use the number Scratch provided since I'm testing this - not making a switch yet.

Then it was time to App-it-up. iPhone in one hand, Photon Q in the other and the computer with 2 browsers open in front of me I begin to Timilize the new phone. Why 2 browsers? One of the nice things about the android ecosystem is purchases are on the cloud, kind of forever. Since my family has worn out 3 kindle* fires, a samsung* phone and I am currently using a Galaxy* Tab* 2 for my walk around the house device I frequent 2 sources for apps. The Google* Play* Store and Amazon* App Store. After 3 hours of scanning the 3 sources and downloading the apps, it was bedtime.

Started Wednesday with a trial-by-fire test of the WiFi-First phone model.

Side Note - What was I thinking calling it “wireless” before? = Of course its wireless - the coolness is it uses WiFi wireless for calls by default. Please accept my apologies.

The good news, a 3 hour webinar on the computer along with the same 3 hours dialed into the audio part of the webinar = success! A couple funny sounds I’m not sure were due to my phone, my connection or the conference call / 30 other people on the line. Stayed connected, mute worked, no complaints about understanding me. First test passed! Battery was at 70% after 3 hours of the call. Made a couple more calls during the day, one from a heavily filtered connection at my daughter’s school and another from a Starbucks. 10 calls, no $ spent on service.

This morning I got the bright idea I’d call my parents from the car using the phone in tether-mode to the iPhone. Tether worked, call didn’t. pretty sure the Scratch Wireless* people are smarter than me. The phone displayed a dialog every time I tried that essentially says, “Calls made over cellular networks require a pass, buy one now? Y/N”. Lesson learned. I’ll have to try data over a tether some other time. This supports a secondary reason I’d like to go to the WiFi first model - to reduce my in-car device interactions and temptations.

Reminds me, I’ll need a fully local navigation app - recommendations welcome. First day, the battery has some juice left and it did work as a phone. Nice. Will it navigate, text, sync, and most importantly for me - take good enough pictures? First image captured by me on the phone = yuck.

References:

The Google* Play* - https://play.google.com/store

Amazon* App Store - http://www.amazon.com/mobile-apps/b/ref=sa_menu_adr_app?ie=UTF8&node=2350149011

Motorola* Photon Q* 4G* LTE* http://www.motorola.com/us/Motorola-Photon-Q/m-PHOTON-Q-4G-LTE.html

Scratch Wireless < http://www.scratchwireless.com>