I’ve had my new 3G iPhone for about a month now and I thought I’d take a few minutes to write some of my thoughts and reflections on the experience for people who might be considering upgrading to the new 3G iPhone. First a little background though.
I’ve been critical of the new iPhone ever since first learning the details about it. I felt that after existing iPhone users had shelled out $600 for original iPhones less than a year ago that Apple should have done more for existing early adopters via an upgrade path. I’m not saying that they had any obligation to do more, but just that I thought it would have been the right thing to do. The easiest thing that they could have done was simply allow existing iPhone users to migrate to the new phone on the same plan rather than requiring them to adopt a new more expensive plan from AT&T.; I do recognize that Apple made a gesture in the form of a $100 store credit for early adopters, but at least in my case after going through the work of securing my credit online, the Emeryville Apple store refused to honor it turning the positive gesture into more of an insult than anything.
Originally I was not planning on upgrading to the new phone. But when my old phone was dropped and broken this provided the entry to try out the new iPhone 3G. My experience with the new phone so far is that it is very similar to old phone. But for people with a working first generation iPhone I do not feel that upgrading is worth it after a month of hands on experience and here are my reasons why.
1. AT&T;’s 3G network sucks. One of the main reasons to upgrade to the new iPhone is for the alleged faster speeds associated with AT&T;’s 3G network vs. the first generation iPhone’s Edge network. Unfortunately, when you can get a 3G connection (and surprisingly in a major city like San Francisco this is probably less that 50% of the time) the page loading speed is barely noticeable over the old AT&T; Edge network. I just loaded my Flickr Recent Activity on my iPhone on AT&T;’s 3G Network and it took over 90 seconds to load. This is simply unacceptable. By contrast my Verizon EVDO card on my MacBook can load the same page in less than 5 seconds.
2. The battery life on the new iPhone sucks. On my old iPhone I could always get at least one day’s use out of the iPhone on a full charge. Several times when I’ve been using my new iPhone the phone has died before I’ve had a chance to recharge it again at night. Using the web seems to drain the battery the most, but then again using the web seems to be one of the main selling points of the new iPhone. It sucks when I need to call my wife to pick me up from the BART station at the end of the day and have to boot up my Mac, EVDO and skype to make a telephone call because my iPhone is dead.
3. Wifi is becoming more ubiquitous and will continue to become more ubiquitous over the next two years. Even if you felt that you were going to get better speeds from 3G and have a better experience than I have, with wifi becoming more ubiquitous over the course of the next few years you may find yourself with less and less of a need for 3G anyways. Yesterday the top story on Techmeme was that Delta Airlines was going to begin offering wifi on all of their flights. On Monday I signed up for the new AT&T; Uverse fiber internet connection at home. Along with that service I was told that I’d have free access to all AT&T; wifi hotspots. On the AC Transit buses that run to the East Bay where I live they already broadcast wifi. BART is currently running an experimental wifi program and already has a beta wifi program available where users can use free BART wifi at some stations.
Wifi is only going to get more available and when using wifi the new iPhone really has no advantage in terms of internet speeds over the old iPhone.
4. When you upgrade from your old iPhone to a new 3G version you no longer get any free SMS messages. The plan with the original iPhone offered you 200 free SMS messages per month. With the new iPhone you have to buy a seperate SMS plan. These new plans run $5 per month to $20 per month.
5. $10 more per month for the new iPhone’s data plan is a rip off. Given that the 3G network is inaccessible at least 50% of the time with AT&T; in a major city like San Francisco, the $10 more per month to pay for your new iPhone is a ripoff. People like to point out that the new iPhone is a lot cheaper than the old one, $199 — but when you do the math over time it will actually cost you much more. Because you are going to be required to keep AT&T; as your service provider with the new phone for at least two more years, you are committing (between the extra data plan charges and a $5 per month SMS charge) to pay a minimum of $360 more for your phone service over the next two years. Because there is a chance that you might keep the phone longer than two years you could end up paying even more — about $540 more for three years. It would be one thing if the new iPhone was that much better, but unfortunately it is not.
So there you have it. My advice? Only upgrade if you break your old phone like I did. Otherwise stick with your first generation iPhone. It’s almost every bit as good as the new one and a heck of a lot cheaper. One positive note for the new iPhone — the headphones do tangle a lot less than the old ones.
One thing that could be hurting your battery life is if the phone is constantly flipping between the GSM EDGE and 3G networks. Each time it makes that transition it has to send an update message to the network so that incoming calls get routed to the right place. If you aren’t seeing any advantage to the 3G network then you can lock it to EDGE by changing Settings…General…Network…Enable 3G to Off.
I’ve also seen a rumor that it leaves the camera powered up if you put it in standby while the camera app is active. I suspect that is an urban myth but thought I would pass it on.
Lastly I’ll bet that at least some of the iPhone software v2.01 bug fixes are battery related so it might be worth doing that upgrade if you haven’t already.
TH, regarding point #1, I think that has more to do with the anemic processor inside the iPhone. Since I have an iPod Touch, I noticed it takes much longer to render pages as well, regardless of the speed of the internet connection that I’m using.
The processor simply isn’t powerful enough to breeze through the more complicated web pages. That’s where rendering a page on a dual-core processor can really show the difference, on the same internet connection, between the iPhone/iPod Touch and a laptop/desktop.
As one of the people who also was reluctant to upgrade (but did so anyway because my company pays the service plan and I sold my original phone for the same price of the new one so it was a no-brainer)…..I think it’s fair to point out a few things that were left out:
1) In other areas, 3G does have good coverage. At least it does here in Boston.
2) My experience with 3G speeds has been very different. I do find Safari page loading significantly faster in 3G compared to Edge. Similarly YouTube is far quicker to begin playing when compared to Edge. Maybe another geographic difference, I don’t know. But streaming Pandora over 3G in my car is a sweet thing. Not so sweet over Edge. I expect more apps to pop up that take advantage of 3G (video streaming, etc).
3) By turning off 3G you get the same battery life as the original iphone. Personally I’d rather have an optional 3G than none at all, but then again, my company pays the service bill so I don’t care about the extra $10.
4) Will you still see no added value in the iPhone 3G if/when the turn-by-turn navigation apps start to arrive? Seems like it could be a nice replacement for the Garmin or TomTom.
On the other hand, one other negative: It can’t charge over firewire anymore, and several accessory chargers use that.
Thomas: On the off chance that you haven't seen this page yet, you should try some or all of the things it suggests to extend your battery's life. And pay attention to the environmental stuff, too; storing the phone in a pocket where your body temp warms it up too much won't help.
http://www.apple.com/batteries/iphone.html
FWIW, my previous phone was a Samsung Blackjack. It originally came with a battery about the same size as the iPhone 3G's and had about the same burn rate. Within 6 months, Samsung and AT&T; were providing the "extended" battery for the phone by default and offering early adopters an upgraded battery for free. Not an option here, obviously; just providing a data point suggesting that all 3G phones with anemic batteries have this problem.
The issue is simply that 3G data and voice require more power. Since they didn't make the battery significantly larger (capacity-wise) in the new phone vs. the original one, battery life was bound to suck when using 3G. That said, battery life can be managed quite easily but it can take a bit of experimenting to figure out what's draining it and deal with that component. There are extended batteries available that plug into the 30-pin connector but I don't think any of them are especially practical or attractive — your view may differ, of course.
As for the extra $10/month for the data plan: All of AT&T;'s 3G-capable phones have to pay that rate. It has nothing specifically to do with the iPhone 3G, other than, of course, it being a 3G-capable phone. It's not a reason to avoid the iPhone 3G upgrade — it's a reason to avoid upgrading to any 3G phone.
Anyway, I hope you get it figured out without over-compromising the phone's usefulness to you.
Brilliant post..! Well, I always want a fully loaded and upgraded Apple iPhone.
That battery is really painful. I have found if I turn everything off – i.e WIFI and don’t use the browser or iPod the battery is fine and lasts as long as the Blackberyy I had. When you turn everything on and use it s intended the battery is not up to the job. It’s a relay issue I’ve considered taking it back.
Of your top 5 reasons, four of them are down to AT&T.; Those of us who don't live in the US simply don't have these problems.
I'd say that your gripes are mainly related to the affiliation of AT&T; with Apple. Most of the points you make seem to be picking at the monthly plans offered by AT&T.;
I live in the UK so we have O2 as the excusive service provider and I get:
500 inclusive mins
600 inclusive SMS's
unlimited data (with access to 9500 UK wifi hotspots included)
…all for £35 a month (which at the current exchange would be about $70).
This might seem quite expensive but compared to alot of the other networks here in the UK (especially with the unlimited data) it's a steal!
So I suppose to sum up, I think that I could discount a few of your reasons becuase the plan seems to be the issue for you.
Completely agree. Yep, the real upgrade oppt’y here is to buy the new headphones for $30 – the new material seems to be much better on tangles. (and by now your iPhone 1.0 headset has died anyway..)
Quick reactions to each of your points:
1. ”AT&T;'s 3G network sucks“ In general I agree with this, but as the Boston poster noted, it also depends on where you use your iPhone. I also live in greater Boston, and my experience has been very mixed. When 3G connectivity is good, then it's great, but I'm finding that even here in Boston the 3G network is very unreliable. I would say that I'm on EDGE at least 50% of the time, which as you say is unacceptable.
2. ”The battery life on the new iPhone sucks.“ As others have noted, this can be manipulated and improved on. I've had good experience by cycling the battery and being careful of what is running.
3. ”Wifi is becoming more ubiquitous.“ I flat out disagree. This statement has been repeated over and over for several years now and things are not improving. Relying on Wifi is iffy at best, and getting free Wifi is even more hit and miss. If you use your iPhone seriously, then don't think that a Touch or some other Wifi only device can replace it.
4. SMS: I don't use SMS much, so this is a non-issue for me, but it should not have changed to an additional fee.
5. ”$10 more per month for the new iPhone's data plan is a rip off.“ I absolutely agree; I found the $60 plan already pushing the limits, and adding yet another $10 is exorbitant… especially since the ATT service quality is so mediocre.
All that being said, I'm still not sure I would return my iPhone, since there are so many amazing things about it. The GPS is great, and the apps that are coming out are simply phenomenal. Having a fully featured computer in your pocket is incredibly empowering, and you get used to having it all time very quickly.
About the 3G, im not totally sure I think AT&T; is to blame for the quality of the 3G service on the new iPhone. Before I purchased the new iPhone I was using a Samsung Blackjack, and I never had problems with the quality of the 3G network. I would use my phone as a modem for my laptop during my daily commute to Long Island, and I hardly ever had connectivity problems. However with the iPhone I have trouble finding a 3G signal altogether. I also believe that enabling the 3G feature minimizes battery life considerably. Peace out
I won’t be upgrading to the 3G until they bring out a 32GB version. I have the 16GB MArk 1 version now and it gets filled with TV shows and Audio books a bit too fast, really needs that extra memory.
Oh, and I know its about taste, but the Mark I version just looks like a more expensive piece of hardware, the aluminium case really is cool, somehow plastic just doesnt feel like its worth the same.
Nick
hi Thomas,
when you dropped your first gen iPhone did it just not work period? I recently dropped mine & it cracked the front glass pretty good, but it still works fine. I'm thinking of upgrading. Does anyone have any friends who were able to get their iPhone face replaced without issues? I noticed on there are lots of service providers that offer to do this. I guess it comes down to the cost to replace the face, which might surpass the cost of migrating to the new 3G iphone. Thoughts?
Totally agree, I was also about to get a 3G iPhone and when I stopped and thought about just what I was getting for the price I’d be paying, that killed it.
I already disliked that cheap plastic back that Apple was using for the 3G — and in the end, the 3G barely weight any less than the original — but when reports came out that the plastic is already developing cracks, I couldn’t help but laugh. Moving to the 3G model is a DOWNgrade.
Apple’s really been going down the crapper lately, hopefully the next iPhone will offer something really worth upgrading for.
-Stu
Former AT&T; Mobility Sales and Verizon sales guy says: AT&T; (Cingular) "juice" has been with Blackberry. For email, the EDGE network is simply mahvelous. AT&T; didnt want the 3g on the iphone originally because they didnt want the Iphone to become an "enterprise" device in the marketplace. Matter of fact Corporate Sales Folks werent able to sell the Iphone to enterprise applications during 07. Gee, what does that tell you. Hmm? You think their bread and butter folks, blackberry, are happy to have the competition in the enterprise space? I dont think so. In our Market, Albany, NY, VZ's EVDO continues to smoke AT&T;'s coverage space. But if you take a plane to Europe on a regular basis and need a full fledged "enterprise" device. AT&T; is probably the better choice.
At the end of the day, watch Blackberry, whatever devices they come up with has a bearing on the strength of the network. The folks at Blackberry really know what they are doing!
I’ve been bleating on about 3G not making a blind bit of difference for ages but will anyone listen? Oh no, off they go…. anyhow, now that you know it’s crap, welcome to the club. And I say this from the UK. There is as far as I can tell no discernable page loading difference and coverage is (T-Mobile, London) fairly rubbish – for example, I have pretty much given up trying to go on the web on the train as movement seems to bugger things up nicely (what is about the word “mobile” the phone companies don’t understand?).
Moan, whinge, bitch…
both companies' products are rip-offs. AT&T; has really pricey data, texting, and voice plans and Apple's products are just EXPENSIVE.
As others have noted, 1) and 2) are related, and I'll just add that working in SF and living in San Mateo, I also have noticed pretty poor 3G service. I can't even get reception in my home and it's pretty spotty in SF proper and enroute. That's been my biggest disappointment, and hopefully Apple and AT&T; can work together through software or building out the network to improve this. It's pretty silly to have a 3G phone and not even be able to use it reliably.
That said, this is my first iPhone. Other than the 3G coverage and battery issues (which I trust will be worked out over time) I love it.
Your five points:
1. AT&T;'s 3G network sucks
Yeah, can’t count on it, but in my experience, none of the US 3G networks are great. If you’re lucky, 3G can be very fast, and coverage will improve in time.
2. The battery life on the new iPhone sucks
Not if you use it mostly like you used the old iPhone. If you save 3G for when you actually need it, battery life is fine. See point #3 about wifi – I turn 3G on only as a wifi fallback, which is a nice option to gain over iPhone v1. Remember, battery life for all 3G phones is iffy. Use with care…
3. Wifi is becoming more ubiquitous and will continue to become more ubiquitous over the next two years
Yep. For me, plentiful wifi means that iPhone battery life is great- just as good as iPhone v1, since I’m mostly on wifi. But 3G can be a good fallback.
4. When you upgrade from your old iPhone to a new 3G version you no longer get any free SMS messages
Yeah, that bummed me out, too. The original iPhone plan was specially priced – a great deal. With iPhone 3G, AT&T; started charging the same as for all their other 3G phones.
5. $10 more per month for the new iPhone’s data plan is a rip off
See #4. iPhone data pricing is the same as for AT&T;'s other 3G phones.
TH,
Next time, instead of firing up Skype via EVDO, why not just plug the iPhone into your USB port and make a call while it’s getting a little bonus juice? Still a PITA, but maybe a little better.
EZ solution for anyone simply looking for a cell phone with great battery life and a reliable newtwork of your choosing: sign up with your preferred network and get that reliable cell phone for free! Same advice if you’re a heavy email user and you prefer rimm’s proprietary and reliable email service–buy a $79 blackberry with the network of your preference and talk and email your heart out. But if one is looking for a state of the art hand held computer with a cell phone on a 3g network here in the states, the iphone is your device. Seems simple, really.
Why does it sound like everyone is baby sitting their phones now? Turn 3G off, watch the apps running, etc… I just want to pick up the phone and use it the way I would use any other phone. I am a current 1st gen iphone user and the battery life on the 3G does concern me. I don’t want micro manage my phone, I didn’t on my blackberry! Hopefully the issues with the batteries get worked out sooner or later, especially since I’m beginning to feel the urge….
QUOTE: “Why does it sound like everyone is baby sitting their phones now? … I just want to pick up the phone and use it the way I would use any other phone.”
I don’t “baby sit” my 3G iPhone. I just leave 3G off unless I actually need it. And this is an *industry-wide* 3G issue- not an iPhone issue specifically. Everything else I leave turned on, except bluetooth, which I have no use for.
My battery life is fine.
I bought a ATT Tilt, a 3G and GPS phone late last year – before the iPhone 3G was announced – and have had a chance to travel to about 15 US cities and get reasonable. not great ATT 3G coverage in most.
where I miss 3G most is I use MS Live Search as my Navigator and when you drive from 3G to Edge coverage the maps often go blank – as the downloads cannot keep up with the speed of the car. Fortunately the GPS signal does not drop and if you continue to follow its red line and beeps it eventually gets you back to spots with 3G coverage. But 10-15 miles outside every major metro – forget about 3G.
The other thing I like about 3G is if I cannot find free or any wi-fi I use the Tilt as the modem for my PC. Speeds on the 3G network in that mode appear faster than they were with my previous Edge PDA.
which brings me to 2 things I would miss on the iPhone. Navigation and modem. It is amazing that the iPhone App Store, rich in so many other apps areas does not have navigation apps – I suppose using Safari you could get to MS Live Search and use it like I do. Forget religious issues with Microsoft – like Google Maps it is free, but unlike Google Maps also has beeps for turns, exits etc so you don’t have to keep looking while driving
But the biggest iPhone drawback continues to be its TCO, especially if you do international travel. Its locked in SIM card ties you into ATT’s $ 2, 3, 4 a minute rates. I calculated other iPhone TCO items below…
http://dealarchitect.typepad.com/deal_architect/2008/07/atts-iphone-3g-ad-campaign-needs-many-more-asterisks.html
You bloggers are too funny, not especially smart, just funny.
When the iPhone came out, without exception, all of you genius's wrote that Apple blew it, there's no 3G.
The smarter of us realized that only 35% of America had 3G and that the power requirements were higher leading to shorter battery life in a phone with no replaceable battery.
But not those bloggers, nope, they knew better than Apple and kept saying, It would all be good with 3G.
Well?
You got it.
Don't complain that AT&T;'s 3G is to blame.
It's a little better than a year ago but not substantially and they are the carrier of choice by Apple and that's what we have to live with for 4 more years.
If you look at the coverage maps from Sprint, T-Mobile and Verizon, guess what, they're all very similar, unless you live in a metro area, you get no 3G and sometimes even if you live in a metro area, you still get no usable 3G.
By the way, the 3G plan is 10.00 more.
If you don't have the 10.00 to go faster, don't get it.
Or get a better job.
Hi, That’s not 5 «iPhone» problems but 4 «provider» problem + 1 iPhone configuration issue. In France where I’m living, 3G network is everywere, even in very small cities. So, when american providers will work as europeans to build a good network you’ll enjoy the 3G comfort on your iPhone.
I must say that I changed from an opld iPhone to a new one without changing my provider contract ! … It’s not an Apple stuff.
Concerning the battery life topic, you’d better try to adjust secreen brightness, desactivate 3G and «push»… well : manage your options to save some energy.
Moreover, if you are spending so energy surfing on internet, that’s because it’s so EASY to surf with an iPhone, much more than with another smartphone…
To sum up : try your new iPhone in Europa : have some hollidays 🙂
just thought i'd chime in with the total opposite opinion…
1. in san francisco i am getting 3G connectivity easily 90% of the time. sometimes it's a weak signal, but it's still there.
2. 3G is FAST. i'm almost tempted to say there's something wrong with your phone if you see no difference from EDGE. it is simply not true. 3G loads pages almost as fast as wifi – including picture-heavy sites like flickr.
3. my battery life has been almost exactly the same as my 1st gen iPhone. i do all the tricks — turning brightness all the way down, turning wifi and bluetooth off unless i need them, etc. and i'm able to get almost 2 days of normal use (push email, web browsing a bit, SMS, etc.).
i'll agree with your last two points – the difference in the plans sucks, but i understand the increase since AT&T; is subsidizing so much of the cost of the phone. and zero SMS just blows.
however, to your 3rd point about wifi – i do think it will become more and more ubiquitous over the next few years, but what does that do for me now? as i said, my experience with 3G in both SFO and SLC has been extremely fast and pretty darn awesome. what good does it do to talk about "the next few years" — hell, it was only a year between iPhone classic and 3G.
anyhoo, if you're just going to turn off 3G i would definitely tell you to not upgrade. but there's no reason to, IMHO. the firmware is causing the battery life issues, and hopefully they'll fix that over time. for now, all the basic hacks are working and giving me a solid day and a half of battery life.
but to each her own…
I didn’t upgrade for similar reasons: http://www.ketchupandcaviar.com/politics/iphone-3g-reception-problems-and-8-other-reasons-i-didnt-upgrade-to-the-iphone-3g/
I hate ATT but I use them because they work best of all the users on my plan. Yes it raw about ATTs 3G and SMS charges but you don’t expand a network with out demand, profitability, and capital. This isn’t a good time for a company to take fiscal risk (like big loans to expand a slow growing demand service), not having a carrier for our iphones would such worse. Whiners about data speed, and reliablitiy of connection are spoiled by are high speed data connections. Ten years ago most of use were using 386s on dial-up. Visit a friend who still has dial up for a week, then ratch about your Iphone’s internet speed. Get real, these are mostly used as luxuries and toys for us geeks who want are data on demand. Those who really want to get stuff done use their laptop.
Oh, and APPLE, come on for something that list for a 1000 dollar with out a service plan a reasonable battery life should be core.
I agree if you have a first gen iphone that is working fine don’t upgrade. The new iphone is a marginal improvement at best. Also I think the 2.0 os is less efficient than the old sw, because I get less battery life with my OG iphone than I did before the sw upgrade. But I gotta disagree with you about wifi, while it is becoming more ubiquitous it’s also becoming more closed, less free and locked down. Also battery life is bad because people tend to actually USE these things more than a regular cell phone. And I don’t think we can lay all the blame of the sorry state of current battery technology at Apples feet.
I’m going to respond to this in a formed opinion, please let me know what you think about it I’d love to hear a response from you. I go by the nickname Pac-Sun. My Email is thedriftingdrifter@hotmail.com.
Well well, the mighty iPhone. You say the Att 3g sucks, I say you must have never owned a device like the Blackjack II or Tilt. I agree people shouldn’t buy an iPhone 3G, but I don’t think they should buy or keep an Original iPhone either.
1. My 3g is pretty much everywhere, don’t forget that the iPhone 3g has reception issues. Don’t blame Att for your problems blame Apple. If you put an iPhone 3g next to a Blackjack II and run speedtests, you’ll probably get the same speed or near the same, but benchmarks are useless, as they run different browsers, so in practice, as much as I hate Pocket IE, it still loads faster than Safari under 3g. I have no qualms about Att’s 3g network, and I live in the SF Bay Area, as a matter of fact I work in Stonestown Mall in SF. When I was downtown I had nothing but super speedy browsing and Google Maps ran smoothly with no waiting for the map to load when it followed me on GPS, this is on a Blackjack II, I had a similar experience with my Tilt. Try an aircard on Att, and run it on your Macbook, it will be just as fast to load the flikr page, as I said, its not the network, its the device, your phone is not a computer, the iphone is a 624mhz arm processor, your Macbook is probably well over 1ghz, probably double the processing speed, you can throw down a 3.6mbps connection but if you run a pentium 2 behind it its gonna be slow. its like saying Comcast is better because you can get a faster download, but in practice, most servers cannot deliver the content as fast as you can recieve it. also, I use my bjii as a modem and its way quicker than on device, because of how the phone renders the page. Get a WM phone and get Skyfire if you want fast phone browsing with a ‘desktop style’ browsing experience. Because skyfire’s servers do the legwork, you get a much faster pageload.
2. As for battery both my BJII and my Tilt got about 2 full days of use with regular browsing. Steveo boy probably wanted to prove a point about his original thought of 3g, battery problems.
3. Use the wifi, I love wifi, but 3g is as fast usually due to processor speed, my Tilt maxed out on device at 1.5mbps on wifi, regardless of internet speed. the processor is a 400mhz Qualcomm dual core, still slow but one of the fastest in the US. I can’t wait until Windows Mobile phones start using the 624 Arms, then they’ll really blow the iPhone out of the water.
4. The SMS was never free, it was just bundled, for $15 a month you could get no sms.
5. As for the $30 data plan, yes its a tad expensive, but tell me where you’re going get that kind of mobility with internet for less, Verizon charges the same for PDAs, $29.99 a month, Sprint charges less, but they don’t have the network or the customer base of VZW or ATT, both with over 70 million customers, that’s about 2x the mobile to mobile, and the Bay Area has a huge ATT customer base, so you’ll spend more for minutes at sprint. You pay the same but you pay less for data and more for minutes.
Couple all of your reasons, then throw in the lack of A2DP, OBEX, and office productivity applications it’s a joke that this thing is called a smartphone. My opinion is semi biased, as I work for an Att authorized retailer, and Steve Jobs thinks I’m shady because of that, I refuse to buy Apple products for that reason. I will boycott Apple until we are allowed to sell their products in our stores. The iPhone has a nice UI, that’s about the extent of its revolutions. Apple products are grossly overpriced, and the iPhone is no exception. A comparable PC is about 2/3 the price of an Apple machine.
Sincerely,
Pac-Sun.
I just got the iPhone 3g. I have tried everything Verizon has to offer. Yes their network is great, but their phones suck. I’ve used palms for 4 years and they are great handhelds but lousy phones. The Blackberries are slow and the storm has all kinds of bugs. Nothing is perfect, but I like an Apple computer that works and works fast inmy pocket. So you spend your money and takes your chances.
I agree with you that $10 more per month for the new iPhone’s data plan is a rip off. If we upgrade to the new iPhone 3G, we will have to pay $120/year more every year. In three years, we will have to pay $360 more. Too expensive!
And the battery life on the new iPhone will also be one of major concerns if I want to buy the new phone.