The good news: I now have a phone.
The bad news: it’s an iPhone. I would have preferred to stay on a Windows phone, but we’re going to be in an unfamiliar place for a year, and the lack of Paris metro, corporate travel, and native bank apps was worrisome enough for me to shell out for an iPhone on a prepaid (mobicarte) plan (yes, it was hideously expensive and involved standing in an orange store for half an hour waiting for the English-speaking rep to help me).
It’s a bit odd;having ditched the original iPhone in 2009 (yes, it was a 4gb first gen), the damn thing feels almost exactly like I remember (with all of my irritations and annoyances intact). I’m wondering if maybe we can work out a deal where she gets the idevice and I get my Windows phone back (depending on the dependency on the aforementioned apps, natch), but we’ll have to see. I should probably also check if Verizon will unlock our 928s when I return to collect everyone; that would undoubtedly be the cheapest, and since we’re not going to have French credit or a French bank account (immediately, at least, with respect to the bank account), we can swap SIMs and top them up as we need them anyway.
I won’t, however, go into the joys of topping a SIM up when you don’t speak the language…
Fezzik In Paris 