Imagine, if you will, a world in which blind loyalty trumps common sense and critical thinking, where the power of marketing and the corporate hype machine are so strong that reasonably intelligent consumers are reduced to social status seeking nitwits on a late night television talk show. Sadly, you don't have to imagine such a place. It already exists, as Jimmy Kimmel proved when his camera crew took to the streets of Los Angeles and handed people an iPhone 4S, and then asking them what they thought of the new iPhone 5 they where holding.

Sprint's Chief Executive Officer Dan Hesse wished long and hard for an opportunity to carry Apple's iPhone, but what he and his company never considered was the old adage that says 'Be careful what you wish for, because you just might get it and then you're stuck with high iPhone subsidies.' We added that last part, but to be fair, does it matter? Sprint, like Verizon, was hellbent on carrying the iPhone, and now it's seeing the cost of that decision.

You don't think Samsung is taking its legal battles with Apple a bit personal? Think again. Samsung didn't pull any punches in a new commercial mocking Apple users content to camp out in long lines for iDevice product launches, and in particular anyone who waited for hours to get their hands on the recently released iPhone 4S. Soundbites abound throughout the ad.

There are lots of reasons why battery life in smartphones might fall well short of expectations. You could have too many services turned on all the time, each one sipping juice from the lithium-ion battery. There could be a rogue app that's flawed or poorly coded and constantly doing things in the background. It could be a software snafu, and it could be a hardware problem. Or, as one Apple Genius put it, the phone could be stressed out, man.