Okay, that was very confusing and I have no idea what you just said.

I have a family share with one iPhone and one regular phone. I pay $50 for the least amount of talk minutes (I think it's 440) since I hardly use my phone to call people, plus AT&T has rollover. The second line is $9.99 more. Then there's $30 per iPhone for data plan. If you want to add texting, that's more.

When I did the math, something with Verizon that would give me comparable features was going to be more, and the phone wasn't as good. Blackberry plans are ridiculously pricey.

The new pricing is $60 for the lowest family plan + $10 2nd line + $30/line for data and $5/line for the lowest text plan. $140 total for unlimited data, limited text. I believe the old pricing had it at $130. I had been paying $100 for the same thing at Sprint. They also bumped the base price by $10 for non-smartphones, so it would have renewed at $110. But instead it's $130, but it has unlimited text and their navigation service which I don't care about.

Verizon and T-Mobile are at $140 for the unlimited plans.

ok, maybe reconsidering this whole idea. I pay all of $53 for all of my phone and text needs. Triple that plus cost of add-on applications, and I won't be embarrassed to use my cell phone ... i'll be laughing at every idiot with a so-called smart phone.


Sheesh.

One thing that puzzles me about the iPhone is that there is no "grafitti"-like input option. I loved that about my original Palm, and my pre-iPhone windows mobile device. Once learning the gestures it was quite easy to write at a good pace.

I'm looking forward to 3.0 and hope cut and paste along with a landscape keyboard option will make it a better authoring device. As it was, I was considering picking up a cheap net-book just to use as my eTypewriter.

Remember, my numbers are for 2 phones. The iPhone for one person can be as low as $70 ($really $75 minimum if you do any texting). Sprint's probably $10 less than that.

With T-Mobile I pay $60 for my BB - that's unlimited data, unlimited text and 1,000 anytime minutes. I don't have an MMS package, but I send or receive them so rarely that I don't really care if I pay 50 cents or so once in awhile.

If you don't use the phone portion that much, you can buy an unlocked version of most (if not all) GSM smartphones (including, I assume the iPhone and Blackberry) and use it w/ a cheaper, non-smartphone plan..

Get a plan (and free phone) w/minimal minutes from att* ($39 for 450 min. in KS [or $59 to bump up to 900]), add in the "general" unlimited data plan (which at $19.99 is $10 less than the "special" one for the smart phones-- but is secretly the same thing) add 200 texts (for $5) and you have a pre tax $65 plan. Take the SIM card from the new,cheap phone and pop it in the unlocked smart phone. Yes, the phone costs more upfront, but the savings over 2 years makes up for it (depending on the phone, of course, and you'd have to get a 2nd gen iPhone to reap any savings).

Once the phone is unlocked, att doesn't know what kind of phone you're using and won't automatically kick you up to the bogus "special" (read:expensive) plans for smart phones. I paid more for my unlocked Nokia but, over 2 years will save about $170 in plan charges and fees.

*or t-mobile



Did that make sense?

I think the iPhone becomes a very expensive paper weight if it's unlocked and then updated.

Information on policy for people who recently (after May 8) bought an iPhone:

http://feeds.gawker.com/~r/consumeri...-it-s-all-good

Thank you, Alex!