[MtnBikerChk]

How come I can go into a Verizon store and get a better price on a phone than a customer renewing a 2 year contract? It doesn't seem fair!

And now that you can take your number with you, why shouldn't I go over to the AT&T store and get their phone for a better price than if I were their customer renewing my contract?! AAAAHHHHHH!!!

 

[Toshi]

if you're annoyed now, don't look at amazon.com's cell phone section (only for people signing up for NEW contracts)...

 

[MtnBikerChk]

if you're annoyed now, don't look at amazon.com's cell phone section (only for people signing up for NEW contracts)...

well that's what I'm saying!

I'm not opposed to switching to AT&T!

 

[Toshi]

switch to att! get an iPhone!

 

[MtnBikerChk]

switch to att! get an iPhone!

I'm not sold on it yet.

Run down the pros and cons for me again! I know you love it

18 days to decide

 

[Toshi]

pros:

beautiful. other people want to touch it. feels solid.
good built in mail client (both IMAP and POP work great, including gmail).
good support for viewing attachments (pdf, word, images).
web browsing experience is unsurpassed on mobile devices. double tap and pinch to zoom along with the rotation sensor are awesome.
all of the included apps are slick: try sweeping sideways between cities with your finger in the Weather app. you basically can drag any interface element to manipulate it. also see: changing the time in the Clock -> Alarms section. whoosh... mmm
3rd party apps are pretty sweet - i'm running ssh and an instant messenger client on mine, and added a bunch of ringtones, gratis.
showing off your photos on it actually keeps peoples' attention. similarly, the screen is good enough that others-not-as-crazy-as-yourself-the-owner will watch full length movies on it.

cons:

slippery. likes to try to jump out of your pocket onto the ground.
no native Exchange support (your admin has to turn imap on).
EDGE only vs. 3G.
have to use something like Google Docs if you want to edit attachments on the fly.
other people want to touch it.
no cut and paste! silly apple.
no Flash support, so you can only watch a subset of youtube. this also means i can't catch up on my online scrabble games from the phone .
the camera isn't anything to write home about, and you can't shoot video.

overall i find the experience FAR better than my previous phones, which have included several Symbian smartphones, a RAZR (ugh, horrible), and play-time on my microsoft friends' devices (both Smartphone/no touchscreen and Treo/Q/HTC *-type form factors).

if it's any indication, several of my microsoft buddies now carry an iPhone despite their favorable employee pricing for WM gadgets...

 

[MtnBikerChk]

THank you

 

[binary visions]

BTW, Randee, I was really impressed with the quality of the iPod Touch interface (same as the iPhone's). You definitely will need to play with one to see if you can cope without buttons but from the standpoint of running applications or serving up media, Apple really nailed it. There are a couple things that are deal breakers for me at the moment but nothing incredibly substantial or anything that Apple couldn't upgrade easily.

 

[Kornphlake]

Aren't cell phones and contracts kind of like cars these days? Last time I signed up for a cell phone I pretty much said I wanted a free phone and a 1 year contract even though they weren't offering a free phone or a 1 year contract in the brochures. After about 10 minutes the guy gave me a free phone, signed me up for a 1 year contract that wasn't advertised, waived the activation fee and threw in a free car charger. If you walk up to a kiosk in the mall and pay whatever they have advertised you'll get screwed. If you're a current customer call your carrier and tell them you're going to switch to a different provider, they'll give you better pricing than what is advertised, it may take some haggling but you can do it.

 

[MtnBikerChk]

BTW, Randee, I was really impressed with the quality of the iPod Touch interface (same as the iPhone's). You definitely will need to play with one to see if you can cope without buttons but from the standpoint of running applications or serving up media, Apple really nailed it. There are a couple things that are deal breakers for me at the moment but nothing incredibly substantial or anything that Apple couldn't upgrade easily.

what were the deal breakers for you?

Last night I sat down and asked myself what I really want in a phone/pda (this is going to replace my phone and my ipaq):

1. sync calendar and contacts is very important - iphone does both with outlook (or so it says LOL)

2. be able to check my email - html

3. wifi - in case there is no cellular data coverage - iphone has it

4. BLING factor - iphone has it (not seriously but c'mon!)

Also last night I realized that while I'm eligible for a Verizon upgrade this month, my actual contract expires in February so I'm going to hold off on any decisions. But I'm going to head over to the Apple store to play. I'm seriously leaning towards this now.

 

[binary visions]

Deal breakers for spending that much bank on a phone (not all of them are deal breakers in and of themselves, but put together, it's a problem):

- Copy and paste. WTF? A device that is difficult to do text entry on, yet you can't copy and paste?

- Storage. Not really Apple's fault, but flash storage is getting bigger and bigger, and I won't buy a media storage device (especially one that plays movies) with less than 30gb.

- No proper flash or java support. Hi, it's going to be a web browsing device, let's please support one of the most popular web features going, not to mention making some websites totally unbrowsable.

- No 3rd party applications. That just sucks. Why are you forcing me to hack my own phone and possibly brick it during the next software update just so that I can run 3rd party apps?

And, of course:

- AT&T only unless I want to risk bricking it, not to mention I have to sign into an AT&T contract just to buy one.

 

[bean]

#1 reason not to buy an iPhone. AT&T.

Worst company I've ever dealt with.

 

[RenegadeRick]

No 3g was the deal breaker for me.

With AT&T I got a RAZR v3xx with 3g, EDGE fallback.
MicroSD support and user replaceable battery.

It supports AAC, WMA, MP3, WMV, 3GP, etc., but playlists could be better.

Only minimal hacking required.
I put Google Maps and Gmail on it and it has everything I need.
Built in Opera browser is good, Opera Mini 4 beta is better.
Predictive text works great.

 

[syadasti]

Pearl 8130 CDMA/EVDO coming to Verizon this month.

 

[oldskoolbiker]

Pearl 8130 CDMA/EVDO coming to Verizon this month.

Nowhere in that article does it say it's specifically coming to Verizon. It says it coming to CDMA carriers in November. Sprint and Verizon are both CDMA carriers. I have saw it where phones come out on Sprint and then take another 6 months to come out on Verizon.

 

[syadasti]

Nowhere in that article does it say it's specifically coming to Verizon. It says it coming to CDMA carriers in November. Sprint and Verizon are both CDMA carriers. I have saw it where phones come out on Sprint and then take another 6 months to come out on Verizon.

Nah...

http://www.engadgetmobile.com/2007/09/29/verizons-juke-pearl-venus-and-voyager-get-outed/

 

[berkshire_rider]

Run down the pros and cons for me again! I know you love it

Seems like everyone touts the iphone for internet/email/wifi and ipod type stuff. Does anyone actually make and take calls with them? Most of the commentary I've seen on the actual phone portion is just that the network sucks. Anyone have any feedback on how it works as an actual cell phone?

 

[syadasti]

Seems like everyone touts the iphone for internet/email/wifi and ipod type stuff. Does anyone actually make and take calls with them? Most of the commentary I've seen on the actual phone portion is just that the network sucks. Anyone have any feedback on how it works as an actual cell phone?

Its more like a PDA than a phone in size if you are comparing to a modern cellphone which is another negative.

We have some users here who didn't go to 1 device on Blackberries until the Pearl because they didn't want to carry around PDA-sized device all the time. A Pearl is about 2/3's the size of an iPhone.

Best to wait until rev. 2 and/or the iPhone Nano.

 

[Toshi]

Seems like everyone touts the iphone for internet/email/wifi and ipod type stuff. Does anyone actually make and take calls with them? Most of the commentary I've seen on the actual phone portion is just that the network sucks. Anyone have any feedback on how it works as an actual cell phone?

i make calls on it, too. the integration with google maps is especially nice: "thai near 98115", click on a restaurant for info, click on its number to dial automagically. it works how a phone should work, and provides much entertainment in the meantime.

(i'm in seattle, however, where wireless coverage is actually pretty awesome EXCEPT for verizon -- my roommate has to go outside on the lawn to get verizon coverage but i have no coveage issues whatsoever on ATT with the iPhone.)

 

[binary visions]

Why would you bother to make a lot of comments about how it functions as a cell phone, unless it functioned poorly? The calling is the most basic aspect of a cell phone; I would take it functioning well as a given unless there were a lot of complaints about it.

Seems to me like asking, "most of the reviews I've seen on these wheels relate to their strength, weight, stiffness or looks. Doesn't anyone talk about how well they turn?"

MHO anyway

 

[berkshire_rider]

Because reviews are touting it as a ipod/internet device, that just happens to also have phone capabilities? Because I was interested in some real-life experience from someone who actually uses one on a regular basis? Because there's people out there who used to be on cingular/at&t previously and were interested if things got any better? Just because a cell phone/pda/handheld has the ability to make calls doesn't mean it does it well. You must have been pretty bored today to actually take the time to make such an unhelpful post, especially about a product you don't even own.

 

[bean]

Why would you bother to make a lot of comments about how it functions as a cell phone, unless it functioned poorly? The calling is the most basic aspect of a cell phone; I would take it functioning well as a given unless there were a lot of complaints about it.

Seems to me like asking, "most of the reviews I've seen on these wheels relate to their strength, weight, stiffness or looks. Doesn't anyone talk about how well they turn?"

MHO anyway

Well, I did see this yesterday, and thought it was pretty amusing. And sort of pertinent here. I generally don't assume that a phone will work well for calling because its seems a fair number don't.

It's from the latest Electronic Design.

 

[blue]

In order of this:

-Functional Phone
-Email
-GPS/Phone book functions

Everything else can go fux itself.

Anyone have a phone that will fit in my pocket, won't break the bank, and can do all that without too much strain?

That's what I thought.

 

[binary visions]

You must have been pretty bored today to actually take the time to make such an unhelpful post, especially about a product you don't even own.

I was commenting on the phenomenon that you asked about, which is why people don't seem to review call quality. It doesn't have anything to do with this product in particular, and has everything to do with technology advancing to the point where coverage & call quality is generally pretty good - at least for the vast majority of the population - and is such a basic function of a phone that it is expected to be adequate, so it's usually only noteworthy when it's bad enough to cause problems.

I think you may have taken the post personally because I said "you" in it - I didn't mean you in particular. I intended it to be a general pronoun for anyone reviewing a phone.

bean; nice chart. I wonder if that's indicative of a lack of cell phone quality, or of most users' very simple needs out of a phone?

 

[MtnBikerChk]

Why would you bother to make a lot of comments about how it functions as a cell phone, unless it functioned poorly? The calling is the most basic aspect of a cell phone; I would take it functioning well as a given unless there were a lot of complaints about it.

Seems to me like asking, "most of the reviews I've seen on these wheels relate to their strength, weight, stiffness or looks. Doesn't anyone talk about how well they turn?"

MHO anyway

You're also assuming the wheel is round. Maybe someone reinvented the wheel!

 

[bean]

bean; nice chart. I wonder if that's indicative of a lack of cell phone quality, or of most users' very simple needs out of a phone?

Fair question. I'd say it's probably a combination of both.

 

[ZoRo]

Yeah, I would say wait till REV 2. Most of the bugs will be figured out and the price will come way down.

OR, you could always get a free phone with a 2 or 3 years plan and get an iPod Touch, they are teh shi**