"Flushed"

Well, not quite, but being dropped in a urinal comes pretty close, I guess. That was the fate of my Treo 755P yesterday, and probably also the fate of my Sprint service today when they refused to do anything about it other than sell me another phone, and didn't seem to mind that I'd be switching to another provider in response after over ten years with them..

A few seconds with Google found several cures for a wet phone, and they appear to have almost entirely worked. My Treo is now back in operation after:
1) turning it off and removing the battery and battery cover and added memory card and stylus
2) drying off everything I could reach
3) putting it on a fan and later a heat vent and finally a few inches in front of a hair dryer set on low
4) a hard reset (triggered by holding down the power button when reinstalling the battery, and then pressing the up arrow key when asked.)
5) restoring all data from the most recent daily backup via backupman on the added memory card
6) Using a T5 Torx screwdriver from Home Depot to open the case and letting the hair dryer have at it again got a few more keys to work. All that remains non-functional now is two keys: "r" and "u". That will have to do for now. Note: opening the case presumably voided the warranty, but at this point my reply is "what warranty?" as Sprint is already unwilling to fix it.

The timing of all this is both awful and great. It's awful, because I'm out of state at a business meeting next week and really need a working cell phone if anything comes up that needs my attention at work. It's also great, though, because the new iPhone is expected to be announced Monday, and that may very well be my next phone.

AT&T has warts too, of course, but I was pleased to drop in their store this morning and have all my questions answered immediately and correctly without waiting. To have anyone even talk to me at the Sprint store took over half an hour, not including the 45 more minutes they needed to determine they wouldn't even try to fix the phone.

Also, both of my colleagues with AT&T phones are able to receive calls in our basement office, whereas I can't with Sprint, even though there's a new Sprint tower within a mile of us.

The other thing I've concluded from all this is that instead of paying for repair insurance, which turns out not to cover what actually goes wrong, I'm better off getting a phone service that uses a SIM card (as does the iPhone), so I can just pop the SIM out of a dead phone and into a substitute and I'm back in business. I can buy a simple unlocked GMS phone for as litle as $30, which is less than a year of repair insurance.

The other debate I'll be having with myself in the coming week is whether or not I really even still need a $600 smart phone rather than a $30 dumb phone.

Now that Asus has announced their Eee 901 and 1000 model 2-3# computers for about the same price as a smart phone, I'm likely to get an Eee PC for all my non-telephone computing needs on the road, so might be perfectly happy with a rudimentary cell phone, so long as it does well at making and receiving calls.

I'll have a month or two to think about that as well, as we await their arrival in the U.S., along with several competitors that may turn out to be an even better choice, which I define as the cheapest PC that can meet my needs when traveling.

I guess the key thing is that the day of the expensive gadget one can't afford to lose (or flush) is passing.

Update: The middlewife really likes the Palm Centro Sprint gave her (via the equipment maintenance fee we pay) back when her Treo 650 keyboard died earlier this year. As it turns out, AT&T has the Centro too, so if she prefers that to the new iPhone, we can keep her happily using a Centro even if we switch to AT&T. In fact, that might be a good choice for me too, as the Centro with a 2 year contract is one cent, less a $50 rebate on Amazon now. Its only disadvantage compared to the 755P is a slower data rate. But I wonder if we should even have a data plan any more. It's nice that a Centro or iPhone can check the weather, and the blogs and the mail, but those are wants, not needs.

I'm getting an increased sense of why Sprint's business seems to be going down the tubes, and may be talking myself out of an iPhone.

Update2: Switching is proving harder to do than expected. I can't quite complete the nice AT&T Web pages that would sign me up with them at my company's discounted rate (it eventually, using either FireFox or Internet Explorer 6 asks me for a login name and password it hasn't assigned to me yet, which it unhelpfully explains may be due to cookies, even though I've specifically permitted its cookies. Fortunately, there's also a phone# I can call to do this instead, except that no one is there over the weekend.

Guess I'll definitely now have to wait and see what Apple announces on Monday before doing anything more about this. As I wait, I'm finding myself increasingly attracted to the idea of getting a cheap pocket organizer and the cheapest cell phone that works. I really don't want to carry anything expensive that can die so quickly and easily any more. Too bad there isn't a phone-less Centro, along the lines of the iPod Touch.

Update3: Looks like the new iPhone is pretty neat. I like the added speed and GPS and battery life. Not sure I need it, but I like it. More problematic is that it's not available until July 11, and my current cell phone is next to useless right now. (Although the keyboard mostly works, it sometimes doesn't when first powered up, which is of course right when you most need to use it.) May be a good thing for me to do without a cellphone for a while though, just to remember what it was like. Plus, the low price of the new iPhone may lower the cost of other phones too, such as the Centro.

Another option would be to bite the bullet and re-up with Sprint to get another Centro, but I can't do that either until July 1 at the earliest, and I think I'm at the point that an ISP change is going to be made now regardless of cost.

Sadly, that means I have to prove credit-worthiness to a new ISP, just after putting a credit freeze on all our records. Since I already have AT&T service at home, that may not be an issue, but I won't be surprised if it turns out to be a problem. Who knows, I may need from now til July 11, just to figure out how to buy either a Centro or iPhone from AT&T.

Update 4: I visited both an AT&T store and an Apple store this afternoon. Both assured me there's no way to pre-order or even be pre-approved to order the new iPhone. I just have to take my chances on July 11. The good news is that after that date I should be able to order on-line, even if the local stores are out of stock at the moment.

The AT&T store also reported I can't get their discounted price on a Centro unless I sign up for a data plan for it. If we want the data features, that's fine. Otherwise, it adds enough to the 2 year cost of ownership to make it cheaper to have bought without the discount.

If I'm going to be required to pay for a data plan regardless, I may as well enjoy the cool additional features of the iPhone (such as WiFi & GPS.) The middlewife, on the other hand, may choose to stay with the Centro. I'm starting to be glad I have time to decide.

Update5: If I lived in Europe, I could get an unlocked Centro now, though if it ever needed repair under warranty I'd have to send it back to Europe, and have a European address to which they could return it afterwards.

If I bought an AT&T phone without a discount, it would still be locked when I got it, but AT&T tells me they'd unlock it for free a few days later on request by calling them. Various other Web sites offer to unlock the Centro and pretty much anything else for a small fee. Presumably AT&T wouldn't like that as much.

Having a credit freeze isn't a big deal to AT&T. They just have to call my home# and have me answer it before they can complete the setup process.

Pay as you go is not available for the Centro yet from AT&T, and the Centro is not yet available from T-Mobile. However, an unlocked one could presumably be used on either. Both appear to also offer a SIM card with 1,000 minutes that are good for a year for $100 (pay as you go.) That would be usable in any unlocked GSM phone. I kind of like the idea of getting a 3rd phone set up that way, to just keep around in case of emergency or as a loaner. A matching unlocked phone costs as little as $100 locally.

As I chase down all these options, I'm increasinly seeing the benefit of a helpful local dealer. There's an official AT&T store 2 miles from my home, and a multi-brand dealer 4 miles away. The AT&T store rep says she can arrange the discount offered folks who work where I do, and also combine my existing AT&T account with the new service. The only thing that seems hard for her to do is get me something that works now, plus an iPhone in a month, plus a Centro eventually. So, no decision yet.

Update 6: Getting back to the original cause of all this discussion, I went looking last night for a water-resistant cell phone. Sadly, they no longer exist, except one mil-spec model available only from Verizon. Cell phones are considered cheap enough now to no longer need water protection, though I for one do not consider being offered a chance to pay $450 to replace a dunked phone "cheap." Apparently the market has spoken though, because 5 years ago you could get phones able to survive being dunking 3' deep for 30 minutes. Since you CAN get waterproof cameras, I'm not sure why the same folks who buy those wouldn't want the same protection in their cell phones, especially since Sprint's optional monthly fee for equipment repair explicitly excludes water damage - presumably because they see that a lot.

I did also read that if someone were to give me an old iPhone, I could still get (the current slower) service for that at the current $10 a month lower cost.

Update7: OK, I have a solution, at least for now. It turns out I can buy an unlocked Centro after all, from Expansys USA, apparently located here in Illinois. That will give me the first thing I was looking for - a current Palm data device, whether or not I ever activate it as a cell phone. I suspect I will do so, using a T-Mobile SIM and $100 pay as you go card that provides 1,000 minutes good for a year. Consumer Reports recommends T-Mobile over AT&T for cell service, so it's worth a shot. If that works, our immediate problem is resolved, and we can either order another and cancel with Sprint, or just leave the Middlewife using her Sprint Centro until our contract runs out in another year. There are even rumors of T-Mobile buying Sprint (which I consider at least as dumb an idea as Sprint buying Nextel.) In the "keep trying" category, Sprint just announced new "lower" rates higher than we're now paying!

The main thing this solution does not give us is wireless Internet. But unless my company wants to pay for that, I no longer see that as worth its added cost. It seems mainly aimed at selling us stuff: ring tones, music, videos, sending photos and videos to others, along with more useful SMS, Email and Web access. But we really should be able to do without all of that other than the occasional SMS message, and we can still get those without a data plan.

The other thing it probably doesn't accomplish is giving me a way to keep my current cell#. Oh well, I'm about out of business cards anyway.

Update8: The new phone arrived, just 36 hours after I ordered it, and an hour after that a local independent phone store had it up and running with T-Mobile. I've synced it with most of the data I care about from the previous Treo, so all is well. One disappointment is that I still have only 1 bar of service at most in my basement office at work, just like on Sprint. That may be more due to the phone than the provider; one AT&T dealer told me Nokia phones get 1 more bar than other brands, and my co-worker whose phone has an extra bar here in the basement has a Nokia.

I'm not giving up the Centro for a Nokia though. It has everything my Treo 755P had (except for the fast Internet access I don't expect to use anyway), and is significantly smaller and cheaper than the 755P. Now all I need for it is a waterproof case for the next time I get fumble-fingered.

Having simple service with no contract, no monthly or daily fee, and a per-minute fee of only ten cents, with no taxes feels amazingly better. Highly recommended solution.

Update9: Palm has just announced availability of an unlocked Centro for $300 in the U.S. too. Details here.