I have reluctantly joined the billions of housewives and hipsters with an iPhone. The Nokia clamshell I've had for years started fritzing out a few months ago. It'd randomly turn itself off in the middle of calls, and the problem only got worse.

Well, yesterday, it pretty much stopped working altogether. So after getting a delicious lunch at Taco Bell ($5 Volcano Box is a great deal!), I wandered over to AT&T to see my options.

Apparently selling straight-up cell phones is a losing business. I wanted to find a phone that had great battery life, great reception, and texting (I don't even care about the camera, really).

In the interest of market segmentation (and I witnessed this firsthand) - the only people who buy non-smart phones are old people who claim they don't want the "bells and whistles." (And weirdos like me). SOOO, all the non-smartphones were pretty ridiculously big or ridiculous crappy with their Java apps. And the COST! They were $80 or so with a two-year commitment. WTF?! Might as well dump $120 more to get an infinitely better phone.

So I played with a Samsung, a Blackberry, and an iPhone. Guess which one won... yeah.

So while I've long been the technology exec with an aversion to smartphones for fear of intruding too much on my personal life, I have to reluctantly give up this title. The first thing I did when I got my phone? Hooked up our MT calendering and email systems.

Le sigh.

Some observations (which are about two-years late):

• My "leaving the apartment" behavior of grabbing my iPod, my phone & my wallet is now down to just grabbing my iPhone and my wallet. It makes me feel naked everytime I leave.
  
• Battery life is acceptable.
  
• 3G is not that bad - I was chilling at the beach last night and was able to download a Twitter client (my iPhone keeps deleting random apps every time I sync - wtf user error?) and post within a couple of minutes.
  
• The funnest part of the phone? Adding profile pictures for all my contacts - I ended up loading most of my photos on the phone so I could set pictures.
  
• I don't think I've used Safari yet - amazing how location-centric I've become on the web; everything I need is on FB, the Calendaring/Mail app, Wikipedia, and Yelp.
  
• I installed Remote, so I could be super lazy and control my music from my bed, which is two long steps from my computer. Lulz.
  

Commitments:

• I will NOT install any games on the iPhone.
• I will NOT check it compulsively in meetings. 
• I will NOT "install a couple of apps" when I'm bored in public.
  
• I will NOT check my work stuff if I find myself having "nothing to do."

The commitments begin tomorrow.