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Cingular-only iPhone At Launch?

FSUSem1noles said:
YES! Finally, I reap benefits from being with Cingular!!!! :D
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Meh, I know, bitter doesn't go my shoes, but ... heh

It's the second or third carriers' customers that will benefit from all of the weird things that all of you early adopters will help discover. ;)

Or at least that's how it's worked here at Verizon. By the time RIM gets around to releasing a CDMA BlackBerry version of a device, all of the bugs are pretty well worked out.
 
Man..by the time I figured out how to use all the counterintuitive features in my motorola crap I already need to dump it for iPhone:confused:

Bet it is going to be awesome and amazon will give it for $75 when you sign up for a new account with cingular :D
 
donbadman said:
who the hell are cingular? what about orange t-mobile, vodaphone or o2? I guess it's US only again...
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Cingular is one of the only GSM providers in the USA. This is great news!
 
While on the topic of the iPhone, I am curious about video playback. It may be a lot to ask, but the Chocolate has it and Apple is competing with that and other media phones.
 
macklos said:
Cingular cellular service is only decent in a few areas and their customer service is the worst I've ever come across. If Apple wants to maintain/boost their image, Cingular will not help them in that area, not at all. Judging by this forum those things appear to be almost unanimous. I'd say it would be a bad move on Apples part to make an exclusive deal with Cingular for any bit of time. Anything longer than 6 months and Apple doesn't stand a chance succeeding. With competition mounting in the ipod arena, not updating their intel product fast enough and this. I'm afraid Apple will be hurting. Not something I wanna see.
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Here, let me help you with that.

10 PRINT "Please enter the name of a US cellular provider"
20 INPUT C$
30 PRINT C$ + " cellular service is only decent in a few areas and their customer service is the worst I've ever come across. If Apple wants to maintain/boost their image, " + C$+ " will not help them in that area, not at all. Judging by this forum those things appear to be almost unanimous. I'd say it would be a bad move on Apples part to make an exclusive deal with " + C$ + " for any bit of time. Anything longer than 6 months and Apple doesn't stand a chance succeeding. With competition mounting in the ipod arena, not updating their intel product fast enough and this. I'm afraid Apple will be hurting. Not something I wanna see."

Seriously, I'd say one or two are ok with the service (I was a fan of Sprint PCS round about 1999-2001), but as far as coverage goes, they're all pretty much as bad as each other. Sure, NetCell is WAAAY better than ComuNet where you live, but where Fred lives, he can only get one bar on ComuNet and nothing at all with NetCell, but OmniCell gets a strong signal, but OmniCell doesn't even have a license where I am, I have to go with RuralFone.

We're almost done with the consolidations so I don't think coverage in general is going to improve. On the other hand, both GSM operators have announced plans to roll out UMA (GSM over 802.11g/Bluetooth), which means if they can't fix their effing networks, we'll be able to do it for them, soon. T-Mobile's should be announced any day now. I suspect once the GSM operators have it, the CDMA operators will follow.

As for customer service, the best solution is to sign for the shortest contract you can. That way, a bad experience can be followed by a quick walk to the local phone dealer (or even better, the Internet.) Don't ever, ever, accept a two year contract.

Oh and one more thing. There is no phone.
 
Cingular gets the US contract. But we already know who will get the exclusive for Japan...Softbank. Their relationship is getting closer and closer.

DoCoMo already sells phones with download capibilities and has its own service.
AU/KDDI has a very very popular service for downloading music to their phnes.
Vodafone/Softbank has a service but doesn't hack it in comparison to the other two companies. Softbank is now promoting "buy a phone/service get an iPod Nano".

iTunes Japan has not been doing well as many Japanese do not want to use their Credit Cards online (security and massive scamming rings). They download to their cellphone and pay for it in cash with their bill.
 
SeaFox said:
Yeah, one of the only ones besides T-Mobile, AllTel, and AT&T Wireless (who they bought out). :rolleyes:
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AllTel is IS95 ("CDMA") not GSM.

The only two national operators of GSM networks in the US are T-Mobile and Cingular, though there are a small handful of regional networks dotted around the country.
 
peharri said:
AllTel is IS95 ("CDMA") not GSM.

The only two national operators of GSM networks in the US are T-Mobile and Cingular, though there are a small handful of regional networks dotted around the country.
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Not in all areas. In northern Wisconsin I got roaming signal on my GSM phone, and AllTel is the only carrier in the area.

Actually we're both right. Alltel does not offer GSM service to it's customers, but owns and maintains a large GSM network they aquired from another carrier.
 
When was the last time Think Secret had a rumor that turned out to be true? Who cares what TS claims, this rumor about "Cingular only" is not worth losing sleep over.

Nevertheless, Apple is taking longer than I thought they would in bringing a phone to market. It does not seem like it will be introduced by Christmas and that's a pity.
 
Does anyone know if it is still possible to start a new wireless plan without a contract? I mean, the whole idea of the contract is to cover the phone subsidy, but if I don't want a new phone do I still have to get one?

I've been considering switching to Cingular since I don't get any signal at all in my workplace with T-Mobile (the higher GSM frequency has trouble going through thick walls) but Cingular works great.

I haven't been on a contract in about 5 years now, and I don't want to get back on one again, which is part of the reason I've stayed with T-Mobile.
 
suzerain said:
I ended up doing the reverse. I bought a SLVR in China and brought it back to the USA. It's so nice not to have to be on any ****ing "contract". (Sorry, I just really hate the state of the cellphone market in the USA.)

I just want WiFi VoIP phones to come along and wipe out the whole market...I think that will have to wait for WiMax rollouts nationwide, though.
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I'm not on a contract. I use their pay-as-you-go offering.
 
SeaFox said:
Does anyone know if it is still possible to start a new wireless plan without a contract? I mean, the whole idea of the contract is to cover the phone subsidy, but if I don't want a new phone do I still have to get one?

I've been considering switching to Cingular since I don't get any signal at all in my workplace with T-Mobile (the higher GSM frequency has trouble going through thick walls) but Cingular works great.

I haven't been on a contract in about 5 years now, and I don't want to get back on one again, which is part of the reason I've stayed with T-Mobile.
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There may be some plans out there that you can start up without a contract, but the problem with carriers now days is that they're slowly phasing out 0-month term contracts, they still exist, but it can be hard to find, when I was working with an evil US based CDMA carrier a year ago, there was only one plan offered that you could purchase without a contract. You can always call up Cingular customer service and ask them yourselves (for comparisons) if you want, that's what they are there for (but watch out, they'll be greedy and try to sign you up then and there, to make their commission).

Here in Canada, with the "only" GSM carrier we have (you Canucks know it's only 1 in reality!) only allows the use of plans with a contract, usually in increments of 2 or 3 years (even 1 year contracts are starting to get hard to get). Not fun.
 
Phil9579 said:
While on the topic of the iPhone, I am curious about video playback. It may be a lot to ask, but the Chocolate has it and Apple is competing with that and other media phones.
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I don't think it's too much to ask for: I think it's a given. I fully expect the phone will record and play back video.

Video takes up a lot of space, though, so another question that hasn't been brought up in this thread is: will the iPhone have expandable memory? Or will it be more like the nano where it will have 4 GB of storage, but no expandability? I'm hoping for expandability, but I doubt it will happen. Apple wants to customers to buy iPods every couple of years, and more storage space is an added incentive to upgrade.

What I predict is that the iPhone will consistently have only as much storage as the mid-range nano (so that would be currently 4 GB). That way it can consistently be marketed as an upsell from the nano. So it will retail w/o contract for $500 instead of $200, but I'll bet with a 2 year contract it's $300 from Cingular, and possibly as low as $200 (same as nano!) if you get it from a 3rd party cell phone seller.

I also predict that down the road (but not at launch), Apple will also offer a larger hard-drive based iPhone. as with the iPod/iPod nano tradeoff, it will not only be more expensive but will be much bulkier. Again, adding the phone features might make it retail for $600, but with 2-year contract that might bring it close to the iPod price. So in about a couple of years I predict Apple will have a 40 GB iPhone in addition to a (by then) 8GB iPhone nano.

I think 5 years from now apple will be selling more iPhones than stand-alone iPods, for the simple reason that the cell phone market is vastly larger than the mp3 player market. I think if Apple can make a phone that the average consumer will be comfortable using as their primary music player, the sky's the limit. My Sony Ericsson phone is a good first attempt at music phones, but I predict in 5 years Apple will dominate the music/video phone market, and people think if the Sony Ericsson the way people now think of early pre-Apple mp3 players...
 
theBB said:
When was the last time Think Secret had a rumor that turned out to be true? Who cares what TS claims, this rumor about "Cingular only" is not worth losing sleep over.

Nevertheless, Apple is taking longer than I thought they would in bringing a phone to market. It does not seem like it will be introduced by Christmas and that's a pity.
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Heh, the entire iPod line just went throuh a major revision! Apple is being very smart here. They want people to put iPods underneath the Christmas tree for 2006. Then, in early 2007, Apple will introduce the amazing iPhone that people will be irresistibly drawn to buy even if they already have a new iPod.

Anyway, by Christmas '07 I predict that Apple will sell at least 30 to 50 percent as many iPhones as they do iPods. I mean, if Motorola can sell 50 million of their stupid RAZR phones, then Apple should be able to sell as many iPhones as they can ramp up to manufacture in the next couple of years!!
 
dr_lha said:
You're joking right? You realise these are pipe-dream mock ups right?
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nice mock up. i've seen 4 like this after i had started making mine using the new ..ahem.. mini nano. but why, why have macrocrap apps on it?? the itunes viz is a nice touch tho. italk still my fav though.even though a phone with wings may become annoying at least it will come to you when it rings :D
 
If I had to guess as to why Apple would go with an exclusive provider to start, I would say so as to play hardball with the network providers.

Apple doesn't want to gum their pretty phones up with provider ick-ware like other manufacturers have to (just like it didn't want to e.g. 'Intel Inside' its pretty boxes), so they make a deal whereas in exchange for initial exclusivity Cingular agrees to relent control over the phones software and services (so that it say interfaces with the iTunes store for music and tones not Cingular's store: although I'm sure the service provider will charge the full market rate for data transfer). Then when the iPhone becomes a huge hit the other providers won't have any choice if they want to get on board as well.

I don't see why Apple would start a virtual operator, because they have no interest in getting into the service provider game. They can get what they really want - an opt-out of the cruddy operator system in the US especially - through market weight alone.
 
lmalave said:
I mean, if Motorola can sell 50 million of their stupid RAZR phones, then Apple should be able to sell as many iPhones as they can ramp up to manufacture in the next couple of years!!
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The RAZR was a smash because it was very stylish (which the Apple iPhone will certainly be, too). But it also has been huge because every carrier has had it available on subsidy, and it's been available in more than one color. Something I don't expect from the iPhone.

It's also been such a huge seller because they are junk inside. I imagine every time a carrier has to replace a RAZR because it was insured Motorola counts it as another "sale".
 
Did anyone notice Disney introduced their own cell phone service? Normally not much but given Steve's close ties to Disney perhaps they have shared some info? www.disneymobile.com

Some very interesting features, makes me think of things that might be available with a mac phone service.
 
Enough with the dance. Release the product already.

Every cell phone on the market sucks in some way. I'd love to have an Apple phone which simply just works.
 
hope they're wrong

I really hope Apple doesn't jump on the camera-phone bandwagon. Seems to go against their philosophy of having devices that do few things but to them far better. And it would make the phone useless to me. But that's just because my employers are sensitive about such devices, with the nuclear reactors and all.

And signing on with Cingular or any other major carrier seems like an even bigger mistake. The only way to truly improve the cell phone user experience is to take them out of the picture and introduce a fair and simple billing system (i.e. MVNO w/ daily flat rate, iTunes-style micropayments).
 
I thought 3G was the coming thing? I am on 3 in OZ and now Vodaphone, Telstra and Optus have all gone 3G- GSM seems a bit old hat doesn't it?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/3g
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_System_for_Mobile_Communications


Also comapnies like 3 are trying to compete by offering downloadable songs as a part of their service how will apple deal with this - surely comapnies like 3 won't offer apple phones??

No offence to the US (after all you give us apple , MS, Google ) but whenever I go there I am taken aback at how dated the "cell" (as they still call them there) phone networks are over there compared to Europe or even OZ
 
I'd have thought a sensible company like Apple would have released the phone unlocked, advertise it independantly, and let people work things out on their own, as well as providing it as a contract phone.

If Apple thought the music labels and movie studios were greedy and overcharged for their products, hoo hoo, they'd better get ready for the phone networks.

*memories of £75 Orange bill after an hour of web browsing in Rome*
 
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