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Fresh Claims of 3G-Capable iPod Touch in Development

What carriers would allow voip over their 3g network, if it means killing their lucrative voice + data plans?
 
manu chao said:
iMessage will reduce your texting costs (if you have no plan or are able to switch to a lower volume plan), it will not reduce them to zero, there is no chance that ALL your texting will be with iOS 5 devices.

Try Skype over a two-bar EDGE connection. Good luck. Pure GSM voice likely covers ten times the area of VoIP-quality EDGE (or up).
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This.

Those advocating the use of iMessage/Facetime must be living in some kind of weird iOS bubble - personally, only around 25% of the people i regularly contact actually have an iOS device and I'd imagine that there are very few people who only communicate with other iDevice users.

As for VOIP - yeah it's great under some circumstances, i use Skype to talk to the family when I'm working away and call costs would be prohibitive but, realistically, you either need to rely on VOIP-to-VOIP calls (therefore relying on everyone you speak to to have a voip service up and running and ready to accept calls) or subscribe to a seperate voip service that allows calls to/from landlines and cellphones. Not sure how those costs stack up against a mobile contract but I doubt it compares too favourably. And as has been pointed out above, you need a fairly decent data signal strength for voip calls. Finally, if you travel abroad, calls are expensive enough but, in my experience, data is even more expensive unless you can find a free wifi hotspot.

At the end of the day, you could potentially replace all of the functions of a phone with individual apps/services but is it really worth all that for what, the sake of a nomimal sum over a year? Some may think so, I wouldn't.
 
Wow... this could be a game changer. Three different charges could get cut down into one. And in reality, that's what it should be... text, voice, Internet... it's all data anyway.

With Google Voice, FaceTime, Apple's new messaging service, Wi-Fi, there are plenty of ways to get around texting/voice charges. The carriers would go nuts though... as that would significantly reduce my "phone" bill.
 
malnar said:
Why would Apple sell a 3G iPad?
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Because you don't hold a 9.7" tablet up to your face and talk into it.

There is no way that Apple will put 3G onto an iPod Touch. They're not going to do something that would hurt iPhone sales.
What I'm speculating is that they'll put a GPS into the iPod Touch. Not many people avoid the iPod Touch just because it uses Wi-Fi location tracking instead of GPS.

It would make sense for consumers to wish for 3G connectivity in iPod Touches.
It simply doesn't make sense from a corporate point of view.
Apple sells more iPhones than iPod Touches (16.2 million vs 10 million). The iPhone is at a higher price point than the iPod Touch. By putting 3G into the iPod Touch, more people will buy the iPod Touch and therefore iPhone sales will go down, resulting in less profit.
 
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HobeSoundDarryl nailed it. NAILED it. Apple will continue to differentiate the iPod Touch and iPhone regardless of both having 3G. You want a better camera? iPhone. You require a more convenient voice device? iPhone. GPS? Eh probably still just iPhone. 4G data (next year)? iPhone.
The iPod Touch gives families with tweens (or data saavy) an out from having to pay a $200+ cell phone bill every month and this will serve to fend off Android owning the lower end market.
Yes, there will be some cannibalization of iPhone. But probably not much, and will be made back in increased iPod Touch sales. Plus the iCloud and AppStore ecosystem.

The carriers might not like it too much. But the writing is on the wall with iMessage, Facetime, and Skype. Hopefully they are smart enough to understand a rising tide floats all boats and this will increase data sales to compensate.
 
Judas1 said:
What carriers would allow voip over their 3g network, if it means killing their lucrative voice + data plans?
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What power does a carrier have to oblige the developers of the already many, many voip and sms apps to dumb down their abilities? The carrier has no way to thwart the use of an app that already exists. They don't monitor what's happening with their data (well, except illegal tethering) and block your phone.

I say they have none. Apple would have to threaten to remove non-compliant apps from the app store, but even they can't delete an app from your iDevice or computer once you've already bought it. And I don't see them making that threat in the first place. Apple doesn't move backward.
 
mmmm...ok, but then get ready for the 90% of users that accidentally leave the 3G enabled, surf and suck data for 30 days, then get a $500 bill that month.
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That's not how the 3G data plans work on the iPad.

And you get warnings at certain % that you are getting close to your data limit.

Nice fear mongering though.
 
Ya know, this one makes so much sense. What if the "iPhone 5" case leaks that were significantly thinner weren't iPhone 5 cases at all, and were actually iPod touch 5 cases the entire time?? That's entirely possible, because I wouldn't even so much as use an iPhone 5 that was that thin, but if it was an iPod touch instead that was that thin with 3G support (possibly voice as well as data, I dunno), THEN the rumours of a much thinner iPhone are completely and totally bunk and the "iPhone 5" is more like an "iPhone 4S", which I wouldn't mind whatsoever, because I actually like the design of the 4 (even with a metal back or what have you).

BJ
 
*LTD* said:
I'm telling her. :D
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She's 10 and we've actually talked quite a bit about the tech/features available with phones and data capable devices. She had an iPod Touch for the past year and been very responsible.
It amazes me people get their kids iPhones. The price is just silly for multiple iPhones on a family plan. A 3G iPod Touch would truly change everything.
 
With iMessage, FaceTime and Skype you will now have an iPhone without requiring a traditional phone plan. This is what I've been waiting for.

Apple could -- if they wanted to -- become completely self sufficient and break away from the likes of AT&T, Rogers and other telecom companies. They could buy data from the traditional telcos and resell it to iPod/iPhone customers so that Apple users would never have to deal with telcos ever again. :)

You buy an iOS device and pay for data via your Apple ID and then use iMessage for messages and FaceTime for video and voice calls (and Skype if you really need an old fashioned phone number).
 
ericinboston said:
mmmm...ok, but then get ready for the 90% of users that accidentally leave the 3G enabled, surf and suck data for 30 days, then get a $500 bill that month.

Apple better make it extremely clear on the device that they are using 3G.

So either $15/month for 250MB or $25/month for 2GB using ATT's ipad prices. Not very attractive considering all this Cloud mumbo jumbo and the latest iTunes stream/sync stuff.

Personally I think all this Apple iCloud/iTunes/data services/3G/carrier stuff is way too complex and nickel-and-dime.
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So the same problem won't happen with the iPhone, where the plan is automatically about 3X higher every month? If the plan works like iPad/Mifi, the period ends and you have to opt in again; it doesn't automatically continue unless you opt out.

And again $15/month or $25 month WHEN YOU CHOOSE TO USE 3G is much more appealing than $70 month whether you use 3G or not. iCloud "mumbo jumbo" is a problem whether you have an iPod Touch 3G or an iPhone. However, if the former's plan is like the iPad's plan, when you burn up your allotted data, you'll have to pay again. With the iPhone, you just run right over your limits and AT&T or Verizon is happy to charge you more and more and more.
 
Meet the Phillips Go Gear 3, an Android OS Device that is being deployed to take on the iPod Touch. Aparently there is enough of a market for competition to be developed and Deployed.

philips-go-gear-connect-32008-06-1310-30-21gall.jpg


With all off the Small Android Tablets, or devices like above, I don't think the iPod Touch is dead, I think it is just getting started. It's Apple's least expensive ticket into the world of iOS, killing it doesn't make much business sense. Though Apple has proven me wrong in the past.
 
I wonder if the 3G iPod Touch is where the case designs are coming from for the iPhone 5. Maybe the case isn't for the iPhone after all it's for the new iPod touch.
 
It really surprise me how people expends so much money on phones and they don't make any calls at all. People sometimes forgets that phones were meant to be ... phones.
 
Wirelessly posted (Mozilla/5.0 (iPod; U; CPU iPhone OS 4_3_5 like Mac OS X; ru-ru) AppleWebKit/533.17.9 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/5.0.2 Mobile/8L1 Safari/6533.18.5)

I'd probably upgrade if it's noticeably faster with better battery life.
 
Mord said:
This is a dumb rumour, why would apple sell what would effectively be an iphone with voice/sms service disabled!?

:rolleyes:
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Um, because not everyone can or wants to throw money at voice service?
Some people don't live to yammer on phones you know.
 
malnar said:
Why would Apple sell a 3G iPad?
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...the larger screen? I mean, I see where you're coming from but the iPad isn't just an iPhone without the phone part (as the iPod touch is, pretty much). It has its own advantages and there are people out there who would want an iPad with 3G connectivity, but an iPod touch as such is too similar to an iPhone imo.
 
I will also reiterate that Apple has done the math very well, they wouldn't even consider this if it would eat significantly into iPhone sales. And if doesn't eat into iPhone sales then the carriers have nothing to worry about. Yet...
 
tasset said:
HobeSoundDarryl nailed it. NAILED it. Apple will continue to differentiate the iPod Touch and iPhone regardless of both having 3G. You want a better camera? iPhone. You require a more convenient voice device? iPhone. GPS? Eh probably still just iPhone. 4G data (next year)? iPhone.
The iPod Touch gives families with tweens (or data saavy) an out from having to pay a $200+ cell phone bill every month and this will serve to fend off Android owning the lower end market.
Yes, there will be some cannibalization of iPhone. But probably not much, and will be made back in increased iPod Touch sales. Plus the iCloud and AppStore ecosystem.

The carriers might not like it too much. But the writing is on the wall with iMessage, Facetime, and Skype. Hopefully they are smart enough to understand a rising tide floats all boats and this will increase data sales to compensate.
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Preach it brother! Don't forget about Google Voice!
 
840quadra said:
Meet the Phillips Go Gear 3, an Android OS Device that is being deployed to take on the iPod Touch. Aparently there is enough of a market for competition to be developed and Deployed.

Image

With all off the Small Android Tablets, or devices like above, I don't think the iPod Touch is dead, I think it is just getting started. It's Apple's least expensive ticket into the world of iOS, killing it doesn't make much business sense. Though Apple has proven me wrong in the past.
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Agreed!
 
fsangiul said:
It really surprise me how people expends so much money on phones and they don't make any calls at all. People sometimes forgets that phones were meant to be ... phones.
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Agreed...

Over 10 years, that is almost 10K on phone/data bills. That is just absolutely fricking ridiculous. :eek:

Meanwhile my PAYGO phone will cost me $2400 which is much more acceptable IMO.
 
mproudfoot said:
As for VOIP - yeah it's great under some circumstances, i use Skype to talk to the family when I'm working away and call costs would be prohibitive but, realistically, you either need to rely on VOIP-to-VOIP calls (therefore relying on everyone you speak to to have a voip service up and running and ready to accept calls) or subscribe to a seperate voip service that allows calls to/from landlines and cellphones. Not sure how those costs stack up against a mobile contract but I doubt it compares too favourably. And as has been pointed out above, you need a fairly decent data signal strength for voip calls.
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Since you use Skype, I encourage you to buy the Skype unlimited plan (about $30 per year) so you can call any landline or mobile numbers. Works great and does not require voip-to-voip (and does not cost $70+ per month).

How does that stack up? $30 for a year of being able to call landlines/mobile numbers plus maybe another $60 for a year for your own phone number via Skype. That's $90 for a YEAR. You know what an iPhone plan costs each month.

If you need a fairly decent 3G signal for voip calls you'll need an equally decent 3G signal for voice call via 3G. I think it would be safe to say you certainly do NOT need a better quality 3G signal for voip calls vs. voice calls.
 
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