The Pros and Cons of the iPhone 3G
There are few pieces of technology that have been hyped, promoted and sold in record breaking numbers than the iPhone. Now, there is a new shiny toy: the iPhone 3G. This new miraculous device is going to make the previous iPhone seem like small place holder in the realm of mobile devices. And will arrive on July 11th. It was announced a few weeks ago, and just lately the price plans have been announced from AT&T. That’s where it is determined whether the iPhone will be worth the money or not. Let’s take a look at the details…
PROS
Its sleek, its sexy and is now more fully connected with a much faster wireless connection. This means that you can be just about anywhere in civilization and browse the web with speeds that make it worth your while. It plays your music, videos (YouTube as well as video podcasts) and has the ability to pin point locations through GPS.
The other good news is the new pricing plan. If you are like me, you have the absolute lowest amount of minutes and the standard 250 text messages for about $35 to 40 dollars a month. With the iPhone 3G, you can have this in addition to unlimited data. Unlimited browsing. All the web you could possibly surf at any time. That’s a nice thing.
In addition to all this, there is also the syncing that comes with the whole package so all of the information you could possibly want are right at your finger tips. Fingertips being the operative word as just about everything is done through the nicely done, sensitive multi-touch screen that allows you to browse, edit and manipulate all the media you could possibly imagine. Email? Now it works with Exchange right out of the box with push email and eats up attachments and spits them out. All in all, it is an amazing piece of hardware.
CONS
But wait, there cant be any cons here! What could possibly be wrong with this genius token of engineering? Well for starters, its on AT&T’s network. Granted, AT&T is not too shabby when it comes to coverage, but compared it to Verizon, its not good. Verizon, hands down has the absolute best coverage. Want proof? For one, I travel all over the country and always have signal and cannot remember having a dropped call. But I am not surprised as they have always been that way and that’s the main reason why I have them as a carrier. Verizon is almost too dependable. Apple approached Verizon first and pitched the original iPhone to them and they turned it down as quick as a bunny. Why? I think its because they don’t need it. (They said they didn’t want to give that much access to Apple, and by control I think they meant money.) They know that the other carriers can’t touch them as far as coverage goes and they don’t want to lose money in trying to woo new customers.
The phones expense is not necessarily a con, as most new phones are expected to be wicked expensive. If you are on the fence and about to go in, you can snag it for $200 and $300 (for the 16 gig model) as long as you sign a 2 year agreement.
This agreement has a few other angles associated with it. They state that you can get this new phone with out signing a 2 year contract and go month to month. Then that price jumps up to $600 and $700 (for the 16 gig model). Wowzers. So now you have it and maybe in a few months you want to break free from the crappy coverage of AT&T. Think your iPhone 3G is going to work anywhere else? Doubtful. They leave that part of the brochure. You now have a very fancy iPod that only has 16 gigs of memory on it.
But the lowest monthly plan is only $70 bucks, thats not bad. No its not, as long you never, ever go over your minutes: $.045 a minute when you go over. Might be competitive but you have to feel gouged at some point. By the way, the price difference for the lowest plan out there now (on average $35 or so) and the iPhone 3G’s is an extra $420 a year. I am trying to think of a guaranteed advantage to go with the non-committed price. Contracts like this seem like crap, but you’ll have to ask Frank about that.
Still no copy and paste? No multimedia messaging? No video recording? No voice command? Bluetooth for headsets only? Third party apps might cover these but for a price, that Apple gets 30% of. Read on…
Whats a (frugal) techie to do? I say wait. Wait until Google’s Android comes out. Android is going to completely revolutionize cell phones just like iPhone did, only more so. When Google went public, their stock did some skyrocketing that made the janitors at the Google campus millionaires. And that was when they had a basis of about 20 million computers. Think whats going to happen when Google gets cut loose onto 70 million cell phones. Its going to be unreal. Google makes its money through advertising, so the cost of production of hardware should be nil for any cell carrier to pay for the operating system. Oh yea, and did I mention that the whole operating system was free open source? Yea. Google also loves voice over IP. Thats the other thing that will blow your mind: there is going to be free wireless out there just like there are cell phone frequencies. Google made sure of it when they pumped the price up at the auction block the FCC held. They raised the price easily to 4.7 billion dollars so that the threshold would trigger that who ever owned it must make it available for public use. Guess who is holding the receipt for all of that? Verizon.
Get more tips on how to Milk Your Money here!
Related articles you might be interested in:
If you enjoyed this post, please consider to leave a comment or subscribe to the feed and get future articles delivered to your feed reader or email.
Comments
I agree that Android may be revolutionary, but remember it is only the software/operating system for cell phones. The Apple iPhone is a revolutionary device blending amazing software and OS (OS X) with sleek hardware design. Never before has there been a convergence device like it; therefore, it’s well worth the money.
Sure, I’ll be following what Google does in the cell business, but Apple has absolutely raised the bar for the entire industry. Fancy new phones that get released are dubbed iPhone killers. Everyone else is chasing Apple. And just when a rival releases an “iphone killer” Apple goes ahead and comes out with version 2.
Apple isn’t done either.
Thanks for the article.
@ Kevin: I understand that Android is simply an OS but what I am looking for (hoping rather) is that it will be both competitive to OS X AND be affordable. I think the iPhone is wicked cool but I am having a hard to with the cost.
I’ll stick with my Sprint SERO plan. $30/month with unlimited data.
The iPhone looks real neat but right now the cost is too high for both the phone and the service. I wouldn’t be surprised if Apple takes over the cell phone like the MP3 player but I’ll let others pay for it first. (It does look cool though).