New iPhone info annoucend today

[innerSpaceman]

Yeah, but if Greg's research is correct (and if someone coud confirm, I'd appreciate it), even AT&T is now requiring full-service packages for new sign-ups with the iPhone.

I'd hate for that to be true, but I was already prepared to get butt raped on the service plan anyway.

[Ghoulish Delight]

Yeah, but (barring company discount) the family version of that plan used to be more at AT&T than the same plan at Sprint. $20 or $30 more depending on your exact plan. Now, the Sprint unlimited plans cost the same as the AT&T plans that aren't unlimited, so they still have the competetive advantage, I'd be paying the same montly for as an iPhone but for a more inclusive plan. But I literally have zero use for those extras and surely, for my use, not worth the $500-$700 it saved me over the 2 year contract. It's still a great price, Sprint is still $10 lower than T-Mobile and Verizon, but more plan than I need.

This might finally trigger the inevitable dropping of Netflix. Time to stop paying $15/month to store DVDs in our tv cabinet for months. We can always rent from TiVo in a pinch.

ETA: Oh yeah, actually, I don't know what the family plan options at AT&T are. For some reason they don't let you buy more than 1 iPhone at a time online, you have to call or go to a store.

ETA more: From what I can gather looking at their non-iphone smartphone family plans, They do still have the options to not do unlimited but costs the same or more than Sprint's unlimited.

[Stan4dSteph]

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.

[Ghoulish Delight]

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.

[innerSpaceman]

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.

[Ghoulish Delight]

Originally Posted by innerSpaceman

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.

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.

[bewitched]

Originally Posted by innerSpaceman

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.

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?

[€uroMeinke]

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.

[BarTopDancer]

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.

[BarTopDancer]

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