I've been offered an iPhone 3G

[hldomster]

From the Carphone Warehouse. As a gesture of goodwill because I have had a few problems.

However, they originally deterred me from an iPhone, but I persisted and was met with the following email:

Hi Dominic

Thanks for your tweets last night. I've been in touch with the team and received the following response from them:

>>>

Hi Guy, although I have not spoken to the customer directly, my colleague Fraser offered the alternative handsets by way of a resolution as a goodwill gesture.

I would be inclined to stay away from the iphone idea. Reason being is that the customer is a CPW O2 customer, and as such his account is not managed by O2 direct. This causes great implications, as when you purchase an iPhone with O2 direct, the contract taken has a specific data tariff designed to incorporate iPhone (high) data useage for streaming videos etc.

This causes a problem for non O2 direct customers as even if they add an unlimited data bolt on to their account, this will not necessarily combat the high data useage associated with web browsing etc. on the iPhone.

To summarise, o2 direct have iPhone 'friendly' tariffs with a different type of unlimited data (so to speak). Hypothetically if the customer was given an iPhone, he could end up incurring extremely high data charges and thus escalate another issue simply due to taking a handset that is not suitable for his contract.

I would say we cannot honour the request of an iphone for the above reasons, however, the offer of the handsets offered to the customer would still stand.

The LG arena is a very similar handset to the iphone in terms of its layout etc. If the customer is after a fully functioning touch screen handset, I would definitely consider this one.

>>>

It is ultimately your decision should you wish to go down this path, but the month on month running costs could end up being prohibitive for you. It seems like you have your heart set on an iPhone, but in all good conscience we could not recommend this handset to you for the above reasons. This may not be the news you were hoping for, I'm afraid. Please let me know how you wish to proceed once you have had time to consider your various options.

regards
guy

So basically I can have an iPhone, but not with the usual data plan. I've looked at the unlimited data I have currently, and it's 200mb a month. Is this going to suffice? I don't think I'm going to be a heavy user, but obviously I want to be able to browse the net regularly, check emails regularly and use Twitter.

So how much data does the average user need? I really want an iPhone, but not if I'm going to fork out a load for data. I can have more or less any other handset, but don't know which one of those to go for (currently have a C905 but had loads of problems).

Please help me out, thanks.

 

[The Governor]

200mb? Eh, I don't know....

I don't consider myself a heavy user at all and I use 300+mbs a month. Mainly browsing the web, youtube, pandora, etc. while on my commute.

Before I had the iphone, I had a windows mobile smartphone and rarely used any data at all, but as soon as I got the iphone. I don't know...it's just a lot easier to rack up the data.

Basically, 200mbs might not be enough...

 

[ucfgrad93]

Basically, 200mbs might not be enough...

I would say, that 200mbs is not nearly enough.

 

[v66jack]

200mb is approximately 1,400 pages download. Putting that in context this is the maximum you can download on o2 unlimited data usage PER DAY!!!

So it probably wouldn't be enough!

 

[The Californian]

I must misunderstand the meaning of the word "unlimited", I though it could be easily translated "without limits", but apparently it means "200mb"... Well, now I know!

 

[v66jack]

It is unlimited however 02 get a bit cross if you exceed 300 mb a day, then they slow your connection down, unlimited isn't exactly unlimited!

 

[v66jack]

It is unlimited however 02 get a bit cross if you exceed 300 mb a day, then they slow your connection down, unlimited isn't exactly unlimited!

 

[Whorehay]

you can get a blackberry and easily meet 200mb a month due to the blackberry compression, even with pandora running in the background.

i think i hit 263mb last month in pretty heavy usage, but the breakdown was 200 mb of TCP data (mostly streaming video and audio) and only 63 mb of blackberry data (browsing, e-mails, pins, and anything else that uses the BIS gateway)

with the iphone, i hit 200mb in a week (youtube, streaming, google maps), so i'm guessing you're going to have to do some serious skimping. however, you can use wifi when necessary and probably make it.

 

[v66jack]

you can get wifi practically anywhere now and its usually free. So if your one of those lucky people that live in a city with free wifi the download limit wont make much difference to you anyway!!

 

[Oliver.m]

I'm on orange and have a 500mb limit each month. The most i have ever used was 298mb but usually it comes in at under 200mb. I would consider myself quite a heavy user... got mobile me push on, use news reader, facebook and the internet daily. I don't have wifi on because i sometimes get bad reception in my room so i'd rather it runs uninterrupted on 3g.

I think that if you were careful and used wifi you would be able to make it work. Could you not add a web bolt on with o2? Don't think they're that pricey.