I started my trip landing at Dulles International Airport and picking up my rental car. My car was clean on the inside, but not on the outside. It was fairly dirty with some dried up bird dung near the door handle. The counter inside was filling up, so I thought, screw it, I'll live with it and move on. I plug in my phone and put in my destination. The time frame says about an hour to get about 45 miles. Since, I am heading north, I am heading into the mountains a little, hence the longer time for 45 miles.
I hit my exit and turn off the highway. I have just over 20 miles to go even from my exit off the highway. Time for the mountain road driving. My GPS is still functioning and I am still receiving email. That's a good thing. As I got further into the mountain road, I noticed a message on phone. "No Data Connection Available" What!? Oh, right. I'm in the mountains, it will probably pick back up later. My GPS is still working, though, so at least I won't be totally lost.
Now I am getting out of the mountains and close to my destination. Still no data signal. My super smart phone that can do the work of 10 major personal electronics has just met the equalizer. A no data zone. I have arrived at my hotel in Ranson, West Virginia, a place close to Charles Town, West Virginia. When I got to my room, I pulled up my carrier's data coverage map. Based on what I saw, it looked like the carrier had been barred from the state. All around the state lines the carrier had very limited if any data coverage. They were serviced by roaming data coverage only. I discovered shortly afterward that AT&T was the major carrier in the state that provided data coverage. Their main competitor, Verizon, had only about 10% of the state covered.
My phone had just been equalized to a phone that simply texts, makes calls, and takes pictures. It became the most expensive feature phone I had ever owned in my life at that point. The wireless coverage in the hotel, was okay, but not great. The funny part of this story was reading the Best Buy ad. They had 4 major Verizon phones on sale at the store that were 4G capable. Wait! 4G!? I can't even get a 3G signal and they are selling 4G phones in an area where the carrier has almost no coverage!? I bet Best Buy has its own Verizon tower that fails to connect once you leave the parking lot.
One nice piece of information that came out of this is my battery life. My battery life has been increased dramatically. I have about 90% of my battery left even after nearly 8 hours. I could probably let it go over night and use it all day tomorrow without even sweating about losing power before the end of the day. How long has it been that one can go without charging a phone for more than a day? I have to charge my phone every night, and on busy days, after about 14 hours of use.
So, in my opinion, West Virginia is the place where my phone met its equalizer. Outside of West Virginia it is one of the most powerful phones around even though it's a 3G phone. It can record video in HD, take 8 MegaPixel pictures, take panoramic photos, and listen to FM radio, play graphically intense games, act as a hot spot for others, manage my email, calendar and contacts for both personal and business, gets me from place to place with GPS navigation, keeps me up to date on my social circles, and let's me search for things like the best restaurant in the area or where to find the cheapest gas, and can do hundreds of other things. Without data, 80% of what I use it for becomes unavailable. No GPS mapping, no email or other types of updates, I'm out of the social circle, I have no clue where to eat, and I will probably pay too much for gas. I have a $600 phone that can text, do phone calls, and takes nice pictures and video. Welcome to West Virginia on Verizon's network.
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