I feel sorry for you people in UK, you overpay for everything, have to wait longer to get it, don't get the same level of support always, and don't get the iphone for $199.
personally I don't care that you can't get it without a contract. I need a cell phone, with a data plan. ATT network works for the most part, and is the same price as verizon. Until something of equal quality for a lower price comes along. I'll stick ATT, and keep getting a new Iphone every year for free (once I sell the old one for more then I paid for it)
oh and cheers!
Ok. You need a little lesson in math. At AT&T:
Total Cost = $199 + (24 months x $100 per month) = approx $2600
I am actually ignoring the sales tax, and the activation ..etc.
Now, you can get an O2 MONTH TO MONTH contract for as little as $8 (Ya baby it's really really "eight bucks!!" read it and weep
) per month.
So, in England with an cheap O2 contract (and lets assume the iPhone costs $800 cause I'm lazy it really costs 495 Pounds as of right now):
Total cost = $800 + (24 months x 8) = $992 !!!!!!!!!
I'm sure the $8 does not include the data plan; but, so what? If you don't want to have data you don't need to buy it.
If you wanted to add data for a few months, and then remove it; you could!! In fact, you could do anything you want with it; as in buy it, NOT ACTIVATE IT, and use it stop your coffee table from wobbling. You don't need a contract and permission from AT&T to do that.
As far as AT&T service goes. It is absolutely the WORST. Their Service cuts off at AT&T's Gigantic headquarter campus in San Ramon, CA. I was there last year, and laughed myself silly. I got cutoff 4 times talking to one of their VP's about a project I was completing for them. I ended up having to use a land-line. If your service doesn't work in your OWN headquarters you have problems!! Let's not delude ourselves. AT&T service stinks over here where I live (The good old Silly-Con-Valley) I don't know about other places. In my own apartment it works only in a single corner. It will cutoff anywhere else
You know what their solution is? They want to sell you a $400 mini-cell-tower for your house!! It's not enough that I'm paying almost $3000 over two years!! If I want reliable service I have to buy my own tower too
!!!!!!
So, why am I a customer? iPhone allows me to do things that make my life MUCH easier and more efficient. Things like checking my emails as I go about my day, entering the number of Calories I've eaten (YEP!! like most engineers I'm a heifer
) and using the GPS function to get around, and yelp to find things to do when I'm there, and play angry birds, and buy movie tickets and take pictures with the absolutely horrible camera
...etc. Let's face it; I'm NOT an AT&T customer, I'm an iPhone (therefore Apple) customer.
I was with Verizon until last year I switched because of the iPhone. Will I switch if Verizon gets the iPhone? Not sure, Verizon is no panacea either. Perfectly good phones turn to crap when they are implemented for the CDMA technology. The battery life suffers tremendously. Also, there is that software herpes called "BREW" that Verizon infects perfectly good phones with that removes the best features; so that they can then charge you to turn them back on again. For example, the same crackberry on Verizon has fewer features than the same exact one on the other carriers!!!
Then; there is the constant lying. Like implementing 4G next year!! How? The standard hasn't been finalized. None of the so called "4G" services come close to the ITU 4G specs! The only people who are "close" are the Japanese, and even they (Dokomo) have got it working only on a test strip that is only 1.6 miles long. I HATE liars
!! I'd pay good money to see how Verizon is planing to provide 1GBb/s data service to cellphone. That's what the ITU standard calls for! 1 Gb/s for moving hosts; and 6Gb/s for stationary hosts (like your laptop with a wireless 4G data card!) Filthy liars
I swear. Anyway, I won't be rushing back into verizon's arms anytime soon
