So a few weeks ago I was in San Diego on vacation and took a stroll into the AT&T store to look at the Focus S and the Titan. As soon as I picked it up, I fell in love with the Titan. Everything about it was rock solid, and I really wanted it bad!
Unfortunately, being a Sprint customer, I walked out of the store because of my contract. $200 for early termination + $200 phone + more expensive AT&T plan = Unaffordable Option. I was quite upset.
When I got home I was on WPCentral.com and discovered that Amazon Wireless was having their Penny-Pincher sale, so I signed in and there it was... HTC Titan for $.01!! I pulled the trigger, because the math made sense. The saved $200 on the phone pays for my contract termination at Sprint, and the AT&T plan is only $5/month more than Sprint. Phone ordered... BUT, it was on backorder, so I had to wait for it.
Well, here it is 3 weeks later, and it's finally in my hands at last! I unboxed it last night, activated it (I transferred my Sprint number), and I was up an running in about 15 minutes... sort of, more on that in a moment.
So here I am... an AT&T customer for the first time in over a decade. I'm not thrilled about that, but the phone is too awesome to pass up considering that Sprint probably won't have any new phone options available until at least spring and there's no guarantee the new phone(s) will be better than the Arrive.
Amazon Wireless Experience
First of all, I want to point out that Amazon Wireless is hands-down the best wireless shopping experience I've ever had. I was able to quickly and easily pick a phone, choose my service plan options, and submit the order with no issues. The only frustration was the fact that the phone was on backorder so long, and that's more of an AT&T supply chain issue. Clearly they underestimate the interest in this phone.
When the phone arrived last night, I was able to follow the instructions and get activated within a few minutes. The only hitch was porting my number... outbound calls were working fine, but incoming were still going to the Arrive. But they said it could take up to 3 hours to complete, so no problem... I waited until this morning. Same thing. I called Amazon Wireless Support, and they were able to fix it within 10 minutes. As it turns out, my Sprint account had a security option on it to prevent porting (oops, my bad), and it needed an extra verification to complete. Problem solved. No calls to Sprint. No calls to AT&T. Done in 10 minutes, and the lady I spoke with was incredibly friendly!
AT&T Experience
10 years ago, I left AT&T (a land line service) swearing I would NEVER be a customer again after a billing fiasco and poor customer service. Since then, at work I've inevitably had to deal with them in some capacity, and every day the reaffirm my hatred of the company. However, with Verizon clearly indicating their lack of interest in Windows Phone and Sprint not acting on or announcing plans either, that only left me with AT&T as a viable option. So I'm not thrilled about it, but I don't know... maybe it will work out.
The first thing I noticed on the TITAN is that it claims I'm in a 4G coverage area at home (with 3/5 bars no less). Now, I'm not stupid... I know HSPA+ (or whatever the hell the acronym is) isn't true 4G, and on top of that there's reports that AT&T is purposely throttling the 4G speeds for Windows Phones, but I do have to admit that my data connection with
dramatically better than my Sprint data connection. My work pages loaded (side-by-side) in a fraction of the time taken on Sprint. Also, my Sprint phones have never seen 3 bars of signal at home in the 4 years I've had their service. So far so good!
Call quality on the TITAN is really good too... at least, so far. When I called Amazon Wireless Support, they sounded very clear to me and there were no gaps or garbled sounds or snaps, crackles, or pops. I'm actually looking forward to taking it into work today to see how signal is there.
In Post 2 (below), I'll begin my write-up of the Titan itself...