Image by Getty Images via Daylife

Many things shock me about AT&T and their behavior over the past year, but the one thing that shocks me the most is that the entire PR department has not been fired. It’s been one PR disaster after another. Here comes the latest, a report that the AT&T website has stopped selling the iPhone in New York. They have now given three completely different reasons for this, none of them making much sense. Basically they are simply coming across as completely inept. People have already been unhappy with AT&T this year, mostly for network quality and uneven 3G coverage, now this. How can you stop selling phones in America’s largest city and not have a planned message for the obvious questions that are going to come? This is PR 101.

The entire communications and messaging from AT&T has been so abysmally bad of late it’s hard to imagine this is one of the largest and most powerful companies in the world. The iPhone was an absolute blessing at first, bringing thousands of new customers to AT&T but now the iPhone has become a curse on AT&T. The iPhone is a world class cell phone, the first of it’s kind. I guess AT&T isn’t world class enough to live up to the challenge of supporting it.

Here is what I can report.

It’s fast, really fast, much faster than my iPhone 3G.

The screen is fantastic. Again, better than my iPhone 3G.

It’s simple and elegant. The most elegant phone, both in hardware and software next to the iPhone. Does it surpass the iPhone? Hard to say and it may just be a personal judgement call for most. But thank goodness, this is the first real, serious competition for the iPhone and it should get Apple scrambling to innovate and improve things on the iPhone. This will be great for customers.

Here’s my bottom line. For more technically savvy users who are getting tired of Apple’s maniacal control over the iPhone, the Nexus One from Google will be great. They will love it and it will sell well to this market. The geek cread on this phone is off the charts. For the mass audience who doesn’t know or care much about the inside baseball aspects of the market, they will likely be perfectly happy with the iPhone. What they will get unhappy about is the continuing problems with the AT&T network. If AT&T exclusivity does run out next year and Apple is able to open up to more carriers, I think AT&T is in real trouble. I do think Apple does need to distance themselves from AT&T as they are like a boat ancor that will bring the iPhone down eventually.

Android phones up to this point haven’t been exciting or interesting at all. The Motorola Droid was the first to change that and this Nexus One will move things along even faster. 2010 is going to be a fun year for mobile. It’s Android vs. iPhone. Game on!

Posted via web from David Jacobs’s Connected World