Well today Apple announced the new 3G iPhone which I’ve been waiting for. I had planned to pick an iPhone up but unfortunately Apple has raised the price. Wait you say, didn’t Apple also announce a $200 price cut starting the iPhone out at $199 for an 8GB and $299 for a 16GB.
You’re right they give you a small discount, only they didn’t mention that ATT has now increased the data plan cost from $20 to $30 a month. This means you now pay $10 a month more for your iPhone than before. Since you need a 2 year contract over 24 Months you now pay $40 more for the iPhone than you did prior to this “price cut”.
I guess you now get 3G speeds, and GPS so perhaps the $40 increase is worth it. But given a year of time I’d expect costs to go down so more features for the same price should be what we get. I don’t think the dollar’s dropped a whole 10% against the rest of the world in the last year.
Now after seeing AT&T’s price increase I’m not sure I want to get an iPhone. $70 a month is a lot for phone service. I pay $40 or so for my 6MB/s DSL including the phone line so this cell cost seems a bit pricey.
That’s crappy… but pretty typical of Apple.
I’m still debating whether I want to get an iPhone myself or not. I think right now I will wait to see just how flexible / useful the custom applications turn out to be. If they’re totally open for developers, then I’d see a lot of great stuff coming in the future, so I’d probably get one. If it gets totally locked-down and “Apple-ized” into one look & feel for $5.99 an app, then forget it… Maybe it would be time to go back and look at a Windows Mobile smartphone again: at least there the platform is open to developers!
I actually don’t blame Apple, I blame AT&T. All the change does it make the iPhone plan cost the same as all the other unlimited data plans for other smartphones, PDAs, Blackberry’s and such. I looked into Verizon’s plans as well and their unlimited data plans cost the same amount, and have the same number of minutes. The only cheaper plans I’ve seen is the SERO offer from Sprint, but then you’re stuck with poor service and some poor phone choices :(.
As for the platform from the keynote it sounds like lots of apps will be free. I have some friends with Windows Mobile phones. They said most of the apps aren’t very good and pocket IE is just crap. It seems that it can barely run any real websites and just doesn’t compare to Safari on the iPhone. Perhaps the new Windows mobile under development will fix the problem, but they need to change a lot about CE to make it compete.
Google’s Android phones might be worthwhile but they’re awhile off. For me I just need to decide if I should go smartphone (iPhone) or stick with another regular “call” only phone this time around. The question is do I really need to be able to check out the web from my phone? Perhaps not. (Though google maps + gps sounds like it will rock.)