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March 31, 2008

3G iPhone ()

by fluffy at 9:03 AM
Okay, so with all the rumors of the 3G iPhone coming out as early as June, I can't help but be a bit tempted to switch to that when my T-Mobile contract is up. I know, I know, my W580i is The Perfect Phone and so on, but I haven't really been using it much as a phone for quite some time (and I don't really use it as a media player all that much either). Meanwhile, I used my iPod Touch extensively when I was in Japan, and it worked out quite well for me, even without much in the way of WiFi access (and 3G + WiFi = killer combination for that sort of device).

Hopefully there'll still be some sort of loophole to allow getting a pay-as-you-go plan with it when it does come out. I don't want to be stuck in another 2-year contract (especially considering that contracts are supposedly there to subsidize the purchase of the phone when the iPhone is accounted in a completely different way).

That said, if it doesn't have shuffle-by-album and Bluetooth A2DP support I'll be a bit less interested. (The W580i doesn't have the former either - actually its shuffle rather sucks and so I use playlist hacks - but it does have the latter, which is quite nice and pretty much the only reason I keep using it as a music player.)

Comments

#10687 03/31/2008 10:46 am
I signed up with AT&T last summer when I finally got off my parents' plan because I figured I was going to get the 3G iPhone whenever it came out. I'm getting really impatient now and I was tempted to buy a $250 refurb on AT&T's store, but luckily they sold out fast enough that I didn't have to deal with that temptation for too long. I was worried that Apple would try to spread out the 2.0 firmware release and the 3G hardware release, but there seems to be a renewed buzz about a June launch for the 3G hardware, so I'm holding on.

That said, $60 a month for what you get isn't all that appetizing of an idea, so I'm praying that they don't jack up the price any more because it's 3G when that comes out.
#10688 03/31/2008 11:20 am pay as you go
Apparently, if you buy a phone but don't get it activated, you can use itunes to get it activated .. and if you don't enter a valid SS#, then you are offered the pay as you go options, which are something like $20 / month for the data and then $30-50 for the rest. If I decide to get something else when my contract is up in May, I may do that.
#10691 03/31/2008 03:23 pm
Yeah, that was how to get PAYG at launch time, but I'm not sure if that's still possible (I heard they were trying to close that hole). The problem with the PAYG offering is it's still a monthly plan, just not on a contract. I'd much rather just get a per-minute thing + monthly data.

Also, AT&T will probably charge quite a bit extra for HSDPA like they did for EDGE in the early days.