Originally posted by: Nik
My biggest beef with the iPhone is that you're forced to sign up with that rancid abortion of a cell phone carrier, AT&T. Next, I don't need anything more than a phone. I don't have to be constantly busy with email and internet and IM and MP3s and blah and blah and blah and blah. My cell phone makes phone calls and handles text messages. It was also practically free. I have unlimited everything (legit unlimited, not unlimited after a certain time of day or some shit), and my bill is nice and cheap.
The iPhone is like the iMac: bloated, overpriced, overhyped, and for metrosexuals only.
Bloated? - What are you talking about? The iPhone lacks so many features it's not funny.
Overpriced? - Only the data plan, but so is any other smartphone. I suppose with any other smart phone like the HTC Touch Diamond you can go buy an unlocked one and jam a sim in and pay $15 / month for the data plan, but how many people here even do that? Not many I bet. The fact is you pay the same for a WinMo phone as you do an iPhone PER MONTH. Unless you're in the business of buying unlocked phones like I do.
So do you want to look at how I view the iPhone pricing? With my N-Series, I'm paying $15 data plan unlimited + $5 texting. That's $20 / month for data. With the iPhone I pay $30 / month + $5 texting - $5 FAN discount. $30 / month for data. That's $10 / month EXTRA per month for TWO years. $240. Price of iPhone? $199.
Total cost: $440.
Please find me a comparable smartphone for the same price. Ok, I'm a big Symbian fan. How much is the N97? $650? LOL what about my dream phone, the Samsung Omnia HD? $700. Ok, so maybe we can downgrade. Nokia N85. $300. Ahh. That's more like it. But the N85 isn't touch so this isn't af air comparison. Bottom line is for $440, the iPhone isn't much of a barrier.
You may complain that this is because I have a data plan already, but honestly you can't say the iPhone is expensive because of the data plan. The same applies for any other smartphone. The idea is that you should be doing iPhone vs. Other Smartphone, not iPhone vs. dumbphone and then bitch about the $30 data plan.
BTW if you want expensive, think of me trying to wait for the Samsung Omnia HD to drop to $600 and then snag one and get an iPod Touch 3.0. Hooray $800.
Do you want to know why I'm not ready to be an iPhone user 100% of the time? It's because I have 8 pages of apps on my iPod touch. If I mess around with my apps I'll be charging twice a day for my iPhone. Hooray. I'd rather not deal with that. But who knows? Maybe I'll cave in soon enough.
BTW just shut up about expensive phones. Look at how it is in the rest of the world. People buy phones and then go to the carrier to get a plan. Phones DO cost that much. Carriers may or may not subsidize you in the rest of the world but because they do in the US our networks blow.
Overhyped? - I'll agree with you here but this applies for the non-technical crowd who probably can't even setup an IMAP account. Thank goodness for dumb features on the phone that let you setup your e-mail easily. Good point though. I'm gonna pick up some of my friends' iphones (yes the female ones who are all Apple fangirls for the wrong reasons) and check out what apps and settings they have. I bet I use my iPod Touch in better ways than they do their iPhones.
And seriously it's only overhyped if you honestly know of better phones and I can tell most people here haven't used a decent WinMo phone nor have they experienced a solid Symbian phone. There are good alternatives out there. And T-Mobile Dash isn't a GOOD WINMO phone... Thank you.
Originally posted by: AstroManLuca
Originally posted by: mugs
Originally posted by: peritusONE
I'm typically anti-Apple, but I would really like to have an iPhone. I don't agree with being forced into a $30 data plan for 2 years and not having the option to cancel it, but the phone is kinda pointless without the net, so whatever I guess. The iPhone is competitively priced and has plenty more pros than cons, so I can get behind it, unlike their other products.
It would be pretty useful even without a data plan, because it has wifi. Yeah it's not as good as always being connected to the Internet, but to many people (myself included), always being connected isn't really worth $30/month. It's still useful as a PDA when you're not connected to the Internet.
Looking at it another way, you can safely assume that nearly 100% of iPod Touch owners also own a cell phone. Put those two things together and you have an iPhone with no data plan without the inconvenience of carrying two devices.
A PDA phone with wifi and no data plan is something I wanted for years with Verizon, but they only had one such phone and it was not very good. Now that I have an employer-supplied iPhone, I think I'll have a hard time if I ever go back to not having a PDA phone.
Yeah, I've thought about that too. Depends on where you live, but free wifi is available in a lot of places these days. Of course you could always get an iPod Touch despite it being yet another device to carry around. Unfortunately, the iPod Touch also misses out on other iPhone features like the camera and speaker.
Do what I did. Go with an iPod Touch for a bit. Once you're hooked on that you'll realize how cool it would be to have internet at your fingertips. 3 days with a 3GS showed me that my problems with the iPod Touch are all resolved.