Switching from Android to iPhone

I've been an Android user since 2009, when the first Motorola Droid came out. I didn't want an iPhone because Apple locked it down so much: They have to approve every app in the App Store, they have to approve every library that developers use, and apps have limited access to the rest of the system. Android was the open alternative to the iPhone and its app ecosystem (with every major app eventually being built for both systems) was a close match for Apple's. As a programmer using open-source software all the time, I was philosophically partial to Android. The Droid's killer app was turn-by-turn navigation from Google Maps, which I used all the time on the road, and I live in Google's cloud.

I don't remember much from the Droid mark 1, but it couldn't have been too bad, because I upgraded to the Motorola Droid 3 in August 2011, before we moved to Argentina. It was a good option because it was a world phone — CDMA for Verizon at home and GSM-compatible for the rest of the world — and I was able to connect it to an Argentine phone+data plan. (We put "dumb" phones on the U.S. lines to keep them active for $10/month with Steph's parents' family plan.)

I never liked the Droid 3 much, though. It was slow and buggy from the beginning. The camera app crashed from day one and Motorola was slow to release updates. A few months ago I rooted it and wiped it clean to try to clean out the bloat, but it quickly got slow again. The process of taking a picture — turn it on, open the camera app, snap a picture, view the picture, share it — could take three minutes. Every little interaction lagged. Occasionally I'd have to make an important call and it would completely crap out.

The problem was, I had gotten it on a standard Verizon subsidized plan (where the monthly fee basically includes a high interest rate on the phone), and they only let you upgrade every 20 months. But I really didn't want to wait until April. It was getting absurd, being an engineer with a dysfunctional smartphone.

Also by this point, I had become pretty disillusioned with Android. It's really open in name only: Each manufacturer builds its own closed system on top of the open one. Motorola had neglected the Droid 3, with the last official update based on Android 2.3, from early 2011. After rooting it, I tried to install custom ROMs, custom distributions created in the open-source community, but none of them supported the phone's hardware, so basic features like the camera didn't work.

The mobile developers at work confirmed that this isn't a problem only with old models: The latest  Samsung Galaxy models have all kinds of "special" bugs. Some manufacturers use their own libraries for things as basic as screen rotation. So Android developers have to buy 100 devices and test their app on every single one. (And a 2011 model like the Droid3 won't be one of those 100.) Most people obviously can't afford to do that, so apps just don't work. The newer the phone, the more likely apps are to break on it, because developers probably haven't gotten to test it yet.

So I decided to switch to iOS. I've been a Mac user since 2008 and love Apple's design aesthetic. Their complete end-to-end control — they design the chips, the screen, the camera, and the operating system — means there are far fewer points of failure, and they can test all of them. The iOS developers at work like that each version of their app takes a week to get to the App Store, because it guarantees a baseline of quality.

Set on an iPhone 5, I started exploring alternative pricing models to Verizon's contract plans. I wrote here about various options I found. The plan I decided to go with was T-Mobile's $30/month pre-paid plan, with unlimited data ("first 5 GB up to 4G speeds," then 3G), unlimited SMS, and only 100 minutes of talking per month. That balance is pretty much exactly what I need, and the price is awesome.

Learn more: Prepaid plan options with the iPhone 5

I've had the new phone for two days and I love it so far. I've installed all the same apps and a bunch more, and there's no lag anywhere. Everything just feels smooth and polished. I love the built-in video calling with FaceTime. The quality trickles down: the NY Times app on Android, for example, is slow to update and slow to respond to clicks; the same app on the iPhone is slick. I was getting 12Mbps download speeds downtown, which seems pretty fast. Integration with Google cloud services is basically as good as Android's. I watched Breaking Bad on the subway this morning and the picture was beautiful.

Android's not going anywhere, obviously; I just think it'll mostly capture the lower end of the market, the way Blackberry used to do (or the way Windows does with PCs). That "lower end" is probably 80 percent of the market (especially abroad), so it's enormous, and will give Apple plenty of healthy competition. But at the top of the line, for sheer quality, I've now confirmed with first-hand experience what I've read for a while, that Apple has a huge lead. It's nice to join the club.

- Ben

Prepaid plan options with the iPhone 5

I recently got an iPhone 5 after four years as an Android user. In the process I also switched from a Verizon contract which subsidized the phone, to an up-front retail phone with a pre-paid T-Mobile plan, and I'll save a lot of money over the long run that way.

I did a bunch of research to find the right plan, so if you're trying to do something similar, you might find this useful.

I'm not a fan of two-year contracts to start with, and while I have no problem with Verizon per se, their policy of not allowing early upgrades without paying the contract cancelation penalty — around $180 in my case, for the remaining six months on the contract — gave me less incentive to stick with them, since I'd have to pay that anyway.

The NYT had a story in December about T-Mobile's upcoming iPhone 5 pricing: They weren't going to subsidize the phone, but their monthly fee was lower, so for some use cases, it made more sense to pay $650 up front for the device. I read about Walmart offering a similar plan. GigaOm had an article about "off-contract" options; demand for this up-front payment structure is clearly growing. Around the same time, a colleague at work realized that he rarely makes phone calls, and switched to using an iPod Touch with a $50/m mobile wifi hotspot. I realized I don't make a lot of phone calls either, and when I do, I can easily use Skype.

The plan I went with was T-Mobile's $30/month pre-paid plan, with unlimited data ("first 5 GB up to 4G speeds," then 3G), unlimited SMS, and only 100 minutes of talking per month. That balance is pretty much exactly what I need, and the price is awesome.

You can see the cost comparison, spread over two years, on the spreadsheet here. Here's a summary:

• Starting a new Verizon monthly plan, with a data cap and a subsidized iPhone 5, would cost around $2828 over 2 years.
• Walmart's plan, with a bullshit terms of service and unlimited data only in name (it's actually throttled over a low cap), would cost $1890.
• Buying a retail CDMA iPhone and using it with a Verizon family plan would cost $1710.
• Retail GSM iPhone, T-Mobile's $30/month plan, $1530.

For my low-talk needs, it was a no-brainer. T-Mobile has good coverage in the Bay Area. Since it's pre-paid, if I don't like T-Mobile, I can switch to AT&T or one of the GSM virtual operators. (Note if you're doing your own research: The CDMA/Verizon model iPhone is also GSM compatible, but it's not clear if it works with 4G on GSM, or just 3G; I got conflicting information about this.) Alternatively, if I need to use my phone as a wifi hotspot, or I need to make more calls, I can upgrade to a $50/m or $60/m plan for a month and then go back.

Getting it hooked up was a little tricky: The $30/m plan is only available online, but you can't get "nanoSIMs" online, only the larger "microSIMs". After first thinking I had been lied to at the T-Mobile store (which told me to go home and buy the plan online), I realized how the game works: Sign up with a microSIM, take it to the store, and they'll slice it down to a nano. (It's just extra plastic around the same chip. You could probably cut it at home but it's less risky to let them do it.) They don't advertise that you can do this, but they don't exactly hide it, either.

I'd like to see this kind of pricing model become more popular. But psychologically, people are scared off by the initial price tag and don't think long-term, so I doubt Verizon's side business of phone loans will go away any time soon.

- Ben

JSConf Argentina, and the Centro Metropolitano de Diseño

This past weekend,  I had the great pleasure of attending JSConf Argentina/Latin America 2012. That's JS as in Javascript, the web programming language. I love Javascript, and for the last few months I've been trying to pivot my work toward a platform called Node.js, which is built in Javascript. I also tried unsuccessfully to organize a BsAs Javascript meetup earlier this year. So I was thrilled to hear, a few months ago, that a JsConf was coming to town! It was organized by Guillermo Rauch, an Argentine developer now based in San Francisco. (His bio page is outdated; he's not 19 anymore).

They flew in some of the top Node.js luminaries from the Bay area - basically the creators of projects I've been working with every day for months. There were several hundred people in attendance, mostly Argentines, but also Brazilians, Colombians, and BsAs-based expats like me. The sessions by the Americans and Brazilians were in English, the rest were in Spanish. Node.js was only a small part of it; a bigger focus was on "front-end" Javascript, like new graphics capabilities in web browsers, 3D visualizations, and building mobile apps with Javascript. I met a lot of great people, and hopefully the BsAs JS meetup that we started to organize over lunch will come to fruition.

The building the conference was in, the Centro Metropolitano de Diseño (diseño meaning design), was really cool. It looks like it was originally a warehouse of some kind, and was retrofitted with prefab structures on the inside, in a way that maintained the original roof, exposed pipes, columns, etc. It was like the building itself was recycled. The rawness of the design reminded me of the Pompidou in Paris. The building is now a public-private partnership, with the city helping to incubate design-centric businesses. In addition to the businesses, a library, and an auditorium (each housed in one of the prefab units), there's a little museum with industrial equipment that (I assume) was part of the building's original function.

- Ben

Learning Spanish with a flashcards app

I've been diversifying my professional skillset recently, branching out from the CMS/framework Drupal to  a new system called Node.js. I'll spare the readers of this blog the technical details - I covered them at length in a recent post on my tech blog.

But the first app I built shoots two birds with one stone: it's a Spanish flashcards app. You can play here. (Or if you're a coder, check out the tech post and the code on Github.)

- Ben

Web entrepreneurs meetup

I'm back in a working routine, with a mix of client and startup work and learning some new technologies. Working at home tends to get tiresome after a while. In Boston I used to have a part-time membership at a co-working space. In the last few months there, I organized a few "developer co-working meetups", to get a bunch of developers (who work with different frameworks) to work in the same space for a day, doing their own thing, but also chatting and discovering points of common interest and collaboration.

So I was very excited when I was invited to a similar event here in BsAs, organized by a bunch of fellow web developers/entrepreneurs from Argentina, the U.S., Norway, and Britain. (Some of these guys seem to be from everywhere or nowhere, having lived in a dozen countries so far.) They meet weekly, and I joined them last week. Collectively in the group there were some Ruby on Rails developers, a few BsAs-based software shops, a few startups still at the brainstorming stage, and two expat freelancers including myself. We chatted a little while working, and went to lunch in the middle. The conversations spanned development techniques, mobile market saturation, how to pool resources for sales management, obstacles to starting a business in Argentina, and a lot more.

I love this global entrepreneur spirit, and I hope to continue attending each week.

- Ben

We can now call doctors

We acquired two important assets in the last 48 hours: cellular service with internet access, and health insurance. By "we" I mean, Steph did all the work, translated everything for me, and I was an admiring spectator. I'd be up a creek if she weren't so fluent.

(For those following our trip, that's all the pertinent info here, you may move along; if you're a fellow traveler trying to do the same, the details might help you.)

Cellphones: We came with unlocked Droid3 "global" phones, and had gotten a lot of conflicting information. There are three major carriers: Claro, Movistar, and Personal. They all advertise heavily and the market seems competitive. A year or two ago, I was told, it was possible for a foreigner to get a cheap prepaid plan with 3G internet; now the network is saturated, and they're a little harder to come by. One person suggested we forget about 3G. We went to several kiosk stores which weren't helpful, and then the central stores, which were better.

Personal (which I've heard has the best internet coverage) wouldn't give us any data service without a DNI (residence ID). Movistar would for an exorbitant price (US$57 for data only, not including calls and messaging). Claro turned out to be the answer: We signed up for a month-by-month plan, with a deposit that we get back after six months. For 160 pesos (US$38) per person per month, we get a small package of minutes and SMS, and unlimited data. (For comparison, in the U.S., I was paying $90/month to Verizon.) We can buy more minutes if we need, but so far our own two numbers are the only local numbers we have to call.

We signed up for the Claro service yesterday, but the internet didn't work. So we went back today, they did a little research, and it turns out they needed to plug in the Access Point Names manually. (If you have an Android phone with the same issue, the specs are: Name: Claro IGPRS. APN: igprs.claro.com.ar. Username: clarogps. Password: clarogprs999. MCC: 722. MNC: 310. Defaults for the rest.)

So now it works! The phone doesn't seem to be counting the signal "bars" properly - it always shows zero or one bar - but the connection is reasonably fast around here (speed test registers 480Kb/s down and 48Kb/s up). I mostly want it for email and maps, so that should be fine.

Health insurance: Argentina has a dual health care system, with a private insurance market that is reputedly very good and a socialized system that is not. We went with Medicus, one of the big private carriers. For 955 pesos per month (US$228), both of us get full in-network coverage, with no co-pays, plus an internacional plan that covers travel to the rest of the continent and the U.S. I was very skeptical - no co-pays, no referral requirements, no coverage limits inside the network?! - but that's what it is. "Infinito." We have yet to see any doctors, of course, but I think I'll make an appointment promptly.

- Ben

Finding a place for our stuff, with Sketchup

By Ben

We're each bringing to Argentina two suitcases and two carry-ons. Shipping a crate is too expensive, and we don't need that much stuff anyway. The rest of our things, we're either selling, throwing away, or putting in storage.

I like the idea of throwing things away and starting fresh every year or two - otherwise I'll end up with a house full of old shit collecting dust, and need a bigger house to hold all of it... as George Carlin so brilliantly put it:



Anyway, how much storage space do we need for the stuff we think is important enough to keep for a year? (That's the stuff I'll open in a year and not think, why the hell did I keep this in a box all year?) To figure that out, I turned to Sketchup (Google's free 3D/CAD tool). There were many options - big units, small units, PODs, a lot of known items to put in them (dresser, bed, bicycle, etc), and an unknown number of boxes. It came out like this:

The best option seemed to be a large unit, 8'x8'8x6'. It would probably have a little more space than necessary, but it would leave some walking space, and leeway for things we haven't anticipated. It should end up looking something like this: