iHas an iPhone

Well, the moment has finally arrived, only 10 months since I first posted that I wanted one: I now have an iPhone.  I wasn’t planning on getting it until Monday, but it turns out today was the day to buy.  Here’s what happened…

The Back Story
I’ve really wanted this for a long time, but I also wanted Jaime to get a nicer phone when we switched to AT&T.  Amazon was offering some nice deals on phones, but I wasn’t sure I could do that and keep both our numbers since they don’t sell the iPhone.  ATT.com had some good ones, but no slider phones with a full keyboard.

So I’ve been meaning to stop into the AT&T store to find out what they could do for us for about a month now.  I figured I’d be as prepared as I could be, then go get the phones on Monday from wherever gave us the best deal.

So I walked in this morning to find out what kind of free phones were available if I purchased an iPhone.  Kerry, the sales rep, showed me one option, but I didn’t think it was that great, so I asked if there were any slider phones for free.  No, but they might be able to work something out. 

He asked me when I was planning to buy, and I told him Monday, the day after my Verizon contract expired.  He says:

You know, we could give you a temporary number and you can buy it today.  We’ll wait to transfer your number until Monday when your Verizon contract expires.

He then went on to offer lots of incentives if I’d buy today.  I told him I’d call Jaime and see what she said, then maybe I’d be back.  So I did, and we decided to go ahead and do it.

The Deal
Here’s what I got as part of the package today:

• No activation fees (Normally $60 total)
• A free Pantech Matrix for Jaime (Normally $75 after rebates)
• 20% off non-text portions of the contract ($19.98/month, $479.52 over 2 years)

When it’s all said and done, my new base contract price will be $10 more than my Verizon contract, but I’ll have unlimited data on the iPhone.  Not too shabby.

The Phone
To the right you can see what my home page looks like.  Along with some of the standard applications that come built into the phone, these made the cut for home page status:

• Weather Channel (Local weather and more)
• The Bible (via YouVersion)
• Evernote (Organizer for digital information)
• Facebook
• Google Mobile App (Access to all Google Products)
• Twitterific (A Twitter client.  Obviously.)

So the long wait is finally over.  I’m excited to start using the phone and see what kind of fun things I can do with it.  And Jaime’s excited because she doesn’t have to listen to Pastor tell her why I need to get an iPhone.