I won’t be buying a new iPhone tomorrow for a variety of reasons. I thought it might be important to note them now and perhaps see how my viewpoint changes over time.

While I’m quite excited about the iTunes App Store and real software for the iPhone, it’ll all run just fine on mine. The only piece of software that will convince me to go iPhone 3G will be a working GPS application. Read: An actual real-life GPS application like you’d have in your car.

I figure that one is quite a ways off, if at all even possible. I’ll leave that little piece of wizardry to Garmin or another big player but I bet it would be one of the most, if not THE most popular application for the iPhone.

Beyond that, it doesn’t do anything new. Edge speeds hardly ever bother me. Most of the time I have a wifi signal. What’s the point in upgrading if you don’t get an upgrade?

So along with the great service Cingular provides comes a letdown of sorts. On Friday night my phone’s keypad stopped working. Cingular to the rescue. They fedex’d me a phone next day when I called to complain yesterday. Got the phone this morning and I can answer calls and read my text messages. Sheesh. I hope this one lasts…

Not specifically Cingular, but the company they use to do the replacements for their 4 dollar a month phone insurance program. I’ve had phone insurance on my RAZR v3 ever since I bought it way long ago, and always wondered if it would be worth it. I can tell you that if you have a phone worth anything more than $100, it absolutely is.

After seeing EEE get a new black RAZR, I was completely envious that her phone actually clicked open and stayed open and that her camera worked. I called up Cingular’s customer service, was transferred to the insurance replacement program, told them my story, and they sent me a phone that I received the next day.

Unfortunately, I think that phone was a refurbished phone because it came in what looked more like a white box than an original V3 box. Not only was I a little disappointed about that and on top of that the phone wouldn’t sync to any bluetooth or usb devices. Obviously, there was something wrong with this phone. I called up the number for “questions or concerns” that came with this phone and told them about how it didn’t sync. They then told me they’d be sending me another phone asap. This was at 4pm on Wednesday.

When I came in on Thursday, I looked around just to make sure FedEx didn’t drop off the phone for me. I was a bit disappointed, but I mean come on, what can you expect? My high expectations continued and I was very happy to see the phone waiting for me when I got in the office this afternoon. I could be wrong, but this phone seems like a brand new phone to me, complete with all accessories and in a true Motorola box.

I’ve synced up all of my contacts and I’m in the process of copying all the pictures back. I can’t tell you how happy I am that for once customer service has worked exactly as it should. This was definitely worth $50. Oh, and get this, they even send me prepaid shipping labels for both phones!