new iPhone 3GS

Dave, a couple of problems with your math. First, any cell phone has a base (voice) charge, so we can cut $40 a month off right there. What you're paying for is the data plan, which you'd have to pay for any smart phone.

So really, it's not much different than a blackberry or any other phone with a data plan.

And if you share the plan, as my wife and I do, it's cheaper still.

By your math, my old freebie phone cost more than $1000, before you even get to additional text charges, fees to get pictures off the server (no other way to get them off that POS), etc. At least with the iphone, you pay your bill and go do what you want to do, without getting hit with extra charges every time you turn around.

And then when you factor in all it can do (and how many devices it can replace) the math starts to look pretty good.

You can cut $10 a month off my math. That's what I currently pay.

I'd love to have a smartphone. I just wouldn't love it 8X as much.

Smart phones are for dumb people.

With my iPhone I no longer need to carry much of my "office" around when I am out in the field.

I no longer need a calculator, I no longer need amortization tables or any way to figure monthly payments, tax rates, insurance rates, mortgage insurance payments, etc.

I can order credit reports from my phone and do everything but input a loan application so I don't really need to carry a computer either.

I can't print anything, but that's not a huge issue with the email capabilities. I just email it to them and let them print it.

confuZion3 wrote:

carguy123 wrote: I'm down for one too. I was just about to upgrade my 1st gen for a 2nd gen when I heard about the 3rd gen. The phones are really quite durable. Mine went submarining on day 2. With their shape they actually look like a submarine as they glide down in a pond. No damage it worked well. It's been dropped off a house once, on the tile floor innumerable times, but the best was when it slid off the top of my car onto a busy street right into the pathway of the tires. It stayed there for a half an hour getting run over I don't know how many times. By the time I realized where the phone must be I got back just in time to see a loaded city bus running over it and kicking it up and, thankfully, off the road. All it got was a faint scratch on the bottom of the front glass.

You . . . can't be serious. Wow! My brother dropped his in a funny way and cracked the screen. In the phone's defense, he dropped it at a weird angle onto a hard floor. I've dropped mine maybe once or twice and it's fine.

Yeah I had a friend who got a skin for his, but still dropped the screen dropping it onto it's corner on the floor. I splurged and bought the $35 silicone case with the hard clear plastic "spine" on the back & I'm really glad I did. I'm a total clutz.

Verizon + LG NV2 + Ipod touch = does everything Iphone does with better service.

confuZion3 wrote:

JG Pasterjak wrote: Or a refurbed Motorola brick. I hear those are totally back in.

I never knew they were "out". You mean the old flip phones from the early 1990s? I would love one of those with a digital conversion (so that it works on current cell networks).

Nah, not the flip. The brick!

It's funny. I used to work in wireless service development, figuring out how we were going to use the next generation of capabilities. A company I worked for rolled out the first email interface (using SMS) for phones in Canada. I put together a hacked up service that let CDMA (I think, I forget what carrier it was) phones send text messages long before this became possible for the mass market. I'd say that 50% of the test messages sent by that service at the carrier were sexual harassment, the other half were "WAZZAAAAAAAP?". I even had a prototype Nokia that was the same as the one used in the Matrix, with the cool spring-loaded slider, just so I could test this new WAP thing that was coming down the pipe. I was one of the top SMS users on the network as I tested the email stuff.

All that history, and I just can't get excited about smartphones. My phone now makes calls. It's like a house phone that's not attached to a house. And that's all I want. I don't even use the camera and I send about one text a week. iPhones are cool when I play with them in the store, but they don't incite any lust at all. Weird how priorities change.

maroon92 wrote: Verizon + LG NV2 + Ipod touch = does everything Iphone does with better service.

...in 2 devices, not 1.

I'm actually still happy with my older Plam Treo 700p. Although I'd love all the iPhone apps I am not eager to go back to carrying 2 separate devices.

And you're paying more for the devices, and you still don't have GPS, or app connectivity over 3G.

I want, cant get for $199 until October when my contract is up for renewal. Anyone know any tricks, maybe if I cry? I don't know if its worth $10 to upgrade my touch 2g to 3.0. I dont get why its free for the iphone and $10 for me.

Data plan is $30

petegossett wrote: Yeah I had a friend who got a skin for his, but still dropped the screen dropping it onto it's corner on the floor. I splurged and bought the $35 silicone case with the hard clear plastic "spine" on the back & I'm really glad I did. I'm a total clutz.

I think I have the exact same skin.

Another thought: I'm genuinely surprised at how well received the iPhone has been with this crowd. Most of us drive cars without radios, and yet here we are playing with gadgets from the future!

Keith wrote a bunch of crap about a phone and some stuff about his work in the cellular business . . .

Can those old analog phones still be set up to work on existing cellular networks? I'd like to try!

Posting this from my new iphone.... Me likey so far.

SupraWes wrote: I want, cant get for $199 until October when my contract is up for renewal. Anyone know any tricks, maybe if I cry? I don't know if its worth $10 to upgrade my touch 2g to 3.0. I dont get why its free for the iphone and $10 for me. Data plan is $30

AT&T is backpedalling quickly on the ridiculous charges they were trying to put on existing users. You may have a chance.

confuZion3 wrote: Can those old analog phones still be set up to work on existing cellular networks? I'd like to try!

No, the analog stuff can no longer be used. Actaully, some of the early diigital stuff is obsolete as well. The FCC requires that phone now put on the network must be capable of Enhanced 911 (E911.) This is the emergancy service that uses GPS to hone in on your location when you dial 911. The oldest phone did not know where you were located.
Every time I encounter someone from Motorola i continue to ask them to make a 'Retro-reintroduction" of the Motorola Star-tac. Much like bringing back the Bettle or the Mini Cooper, the Star-tac is still the best phone that I have ever had.

I still have a 1st-gen flip-phone, yeah the huge one, and it's still in the box. Think I can ebay it someday & retire off the profits?

FWIW, I got it from McDonalds. They had a deal at the time that if you made a $10-donation to the Ronald McDonald House you got the phone for "free" with a 2-year contract.

Tim Baxter wrote:

SupraWes wrote: I want, cant get for $199 until October when my contract is up for renewal. Anyone know any tricks, maybe if I cry? I don't know if its worth $10 to upgrade my touch 2g to 3.0. I dont get why its free for the iphone and $10 for me. Data plan is $30

AT&T is backpedalling quickly on the ridiculous charges they were trying to put on existing users. You may have a chance.

I may go try, technically I should be able to upgrade my phone in July but I had to make a change to my contract a few months in and they reset my contract date, but I did not get a phone at that time. The bad news is I am not a current Iphone customer so I wont fall into whatever deal they work out for current iphone owners who want to upgrade.

Well, both our iPhones are eligible for upgrades, but I'm not sure I want to take on the extra monthly charges. Right now our iPhone data plans are $20 per month for each phone which covers unlimited data plus 200 texts. The 3G plan is $30, and you get NO texts with that. They want another $5 per month for 200 texts. So that's an additional $15 per phone over what we're paying now.

Man, I dig the new phones, but $30 a month is real money. And our house really isn't even in 3G territory (although the office is).

Decisions, decisions...

jg

I upgraded my 3G to 3.0 and I'm done for a while. I figure by the time the next generation of the iPhone has been released I'll be eligible for any crazy pricing shenanigans that AT&T has come out with.

Kim's three year old Razr died yesterday, which is totally ironic, because mine is still working fine—everyone said that I'd kill mine in a few months. Anyhoo, went phone shopping today and she got a Crackberry Curve. Decent enough price (99) and we actually wound up dropping our plan so that the additional data charge didn't up our total monthly expense.

I, did, however find the phone that I want...the Motorola Tundra. Looks like a good phone to use as a hammer.