iPhone 3G: A-w-e-s-o-m-e
Posted by: Pedro in Gadget Galore, tags: 2.0, 3G, 3rd, apple, Apps, AT&T, awesome, GPS, iphone, jobs, navigation, party, steve
Stevie J. just introduced it at the WWDC in San Francisco. The lowdown:
- Lighter, but bit fatter as well
- Faster 3G internet
- Built-in GPS
- $199 for 8 gigs!
- Open platform, App Store, Enterprise stuff, yadda yadda
- Flush 3.5mm headphone jack (used to be lowered so regular headphones could not work with it)
- Upgraded Speaker Quality
- Works in more countries
So, the boys in Cupertino have pretty much fixed everything that was wrong with the iPhone at first.
Jobsy also introduced “MobileMe“, a rebranding of .Mac that promises to sync your computer (including through Outlook on PC’s) to your iPhone/iPod Touch - contacts, mail, etc. Apple’s really building an empire here, and wants to sync it all up.
The Hookup: Lifehacker has a nice roundup of Gizmodo articles of what happened at WWDC
Editor’s Note: Although they did fix a lot of things with the iPhone, many people were disappointed that there is still no MMS capabilities, 32 Gb upgrade (I think that will come within the next 6 months), Copy/Paste (which is a real bummer), an upgrade to the camera (currently 2 megapixels), and turn-by-turn GPS navigation. Not too big, but some people were disappointed by the facy that the GPS wasn’t turn-by-turn navigation, but a 3rd party application will probably change this TOM-TOM says they have an app for the iPhone with turn-by-turn navigation. I’m pretty sure the lowered price trumps over all of these little tiny problems.
(picture from Engadget, a Weblogs Network Blog)
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The price cut on the actual hardware but paying up to $100 a month for service is still a huge issue.
Actually, unlimited data is only 30 bucks a month. In my opinion, that is awesome because I rarely even use my voice plan. To add voice, with like 400 minutes or something (please correct me if I’m wrong), is only ten dollars more a month.
I’d say that’s pretty good. Although, if you do want unlimited voice and data (and text messaging?), it will cost you $100.
Wait is there like a chart somewhere? Where are you getting this? I’m just curious…
According to the Houston Chronicle yes, you pay $30 a month for unlimited data. I’m don’t think that’s particularly awesome because it is no cheaper than other plans.
For voice, even if you want to use it only “rarely” you have to pay the minimum $40 for 450 weekday minutes. So that’s, $70 dollars a month minimum, and I assume for someone who needs more minutes the price could get up to somewhere around $100 monthly.
Apparently they increased the cost of the plan by $10 for the iPhone3G’s plan (the normal iPhone only costs $60 a month), so you will pay more in the end even though they say “Half the price.” But you’ll still get “Twice as fast.”
I guess they decided “Twice as fast… for more money!” wouldn’t have been a very effective ad
Oh yeah, and even if you thought “Well since I use the voice rarely I’ll keep my old crappy phone for calls and only pay the $30 data plan” you’re out of luck because a two year contract with AT&T is required.
So now I feel like doing the math with the 8 gb model:
Original:
Upfront Price- $400
Monthly- $60 * 24 months = $1440
————
Total- $1840
3G:
Upfront Price- $200
Monthly- $70 * 24 months = $1680
————
Total- $1880
So over the course of the required two years you’ve already paid $40 more than the original.
hmm… I guess your right. According to MSNBC, it will cost you more than it used to be. Although, they say that it won’t cost you more than any other smart phone carrier at the moment. So, yeah, it used to be cheaper, but now it is up to where the rest of the industry is. So why are they raising prices? From Engadget:
Basically, what that means for Apple is they’ve decided to stop asking their carrier-partners for a cut of your monthly service fees. In exchange, the carriers have agreed to pay a significant chunk of the cost of your new iPhone 3G in order to get you to sign up.
It used to be that nobody wanted the iPhone because of Apple’s “we want a chunk of everything” policy. Now, they have changed their policy which is why we are seeing a ton of international carriers taking up the iPhone. Apple is making up for not getting a bit of each person’s monthly bill by having the carriers pay for the new iPhone. In turn, AT&T is raising its data and voice prices.
Here’s a neat little chart which Gizmodo put together:
http://gizmodo.com/5015540/iphone-3gs-true-price-compared
So, while it’s not as cheap as it used to be, it’s cheaper than other Smart phones on different carriers.