cingular user and fan... been using a boring free phone for 6 months waiting for this. if this thing is at least 25% of our expectations i'm buying.
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Wall Street Journal
- Thread starter adam1185
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I think you mean Cingular's 2G GSM voice network; EDGE is Cingular's 2.75G data network that runs alongside with their GSM. EDGE actually stands for Enhanced Data for the GSM Evolution.
Oh, and T-Mobile's actually working on an Unlicensed Mobile Access (UMA) system that's currently being tested in Seattle. It will use a T-Mobile HotSpot or your own Home HotSpot whenever your phone is in range of one, and will switch over to GSM whenever there isn't one within distance.
Crap...its AP. So much for the iPhone. I don't join a network to get a phone I join a network to get good service. Dang.
Apple you suck.
Yeah, my sentiments exactly.
OT: FoxNews? Oh yeah, there's a great source of "information".
Edit: On the plus side: All the Cingular users get to deal with the inevitable "revision A" problems, and get them ironed out before the rest of us buy.
I recently (a little less than a year ago) switched from Verizon to Cingular and couldn't be more pleased.
Verizon really ticked me off with their standard menu style they place on almost all of their phones. Fugly ass red and Windows-like textures.
I'm really pleased with my Cingular phone for 3 reasons. I can customize the interface, I get a great signal pretty much everywhere I go, and with the SIM card (which Verizon phones don't have) I can store my phone book and transfer it to, hopefully, the iPhone.
Verizon really ticked me off with their standard menu style they place on almost all of their phones. Fugly ass red and Windows-like textures.
I'm really pleased with my Cingular phone for 3 reasons. I can customize the interface, I get a great signal pretty much everywhere I go, and with the SIM card (which Verizon phones don't have) I can store my phone book and transfer it to, hopefully, the iPhone.
Yeah, I keep forgetting that. I'll just have to get a European iPhone. As whenever Sony-Ericsson or anyone else makes a phone, the European model always includes 1900mhz GSM. That's why the Sony-Ericsson T610 was what T-Mobile offered in the U.S., even though the T-616 Cingular sold supported 850 and 1900mhz. Of course, T-Mobile had that phone first. It wasn't until about six months later the 616 came out.
I had an interesting conversation with my Cingular rep (the one able to deal with internet access issues). He stated Edge was slower than the other networks out there (Sprint commercial rteinforces that). But one wonders if Cingular has another deployment planned to attract Apple. Apple tends to adopt things before they are really ripe.
Wi-Max as the backup plan?
Rocketman
Plus, I think Verizon and Sprint have different visions. They are creating their own music phone solutions and were not willing to give the ROKR a try because they wanted people to spend $2-3 buying a song through them instead of seamlessly syncing with iTunes.
Well, yes, 2.75G is slower than 3G, but that commercial is unfair because Cingular does have a 3G network. It'd be like Cingular comparing their 3G UMTS to Sprint's 2.5G 1xRTT.
At consumerreports.org (subsciption required), Sprint is rated dead last in most centres, with Cingular next to last in most cases. With Apple's penchant for control, however, this looks to me to likely be an MVNO.
man, it sounds like this may be cingular branded. sucks if that is so. if they are going to charge $400, i rather it be an unlocked gsm so i can at least use most of the features of the phone on tmobile.
also, this phone had better be godlike because i run the sonyericsson w810i and i love that thing, they have to top that by a big margin for me to want to make a switch.
also, this phone had better be godlike because i run the sonyericsson w810i and i love that thing, they have to top that by a big margin for me to want to make a switch.
I agree about the MVNO. Im currently on Sprint and hate it. It use to be okay but its gone down hill here in San Diego - I can not even get reception at work or in my house, which both are with in a mile of the Zoo (extremely central).
Apple will not introduce a phone branded by another manufacturer after all the toil that reportedly went into this phone (remember, Jobs reportedly scrapped the whole thing and had it redesigned from scratch), and especially not after the ROKR failure.
Well, this is it for the iMacZealot on MacRumors/apple.com until 3:30 tomorrow. If only the storm that's supposed to come on Friday would come tonight so I'd have a snow day...
Zealot OUT!
Zealot OUT!
If this is true, then it sucks. Basically, just like any other phone branded with all kinds of Cingular crap that we will have to pay a boat load of money for to get unlocked & thats sold through Cingular stores?? Yeah, way to shake up the system, Apple.
Why the hell can't they just offer an unlocked GSM phone sold through the Apple Store at a fair price without all the BS?? Is that too much to ask??? Apparently so.
Why the hell can't they just offer an unlocked GSM phone sold through the Apple Store at a fair price without all the BS?? Is that too much to ask??? Apparently so.
If this is true, then it sucks. Basically, just like any other phone branded with all kinds of Cingular crap that we will have to pay a boat load of money for to get unlocked & thats sold through Cingular stores?? Yeah, way to shake up the system, Apple.
Why the hell can't they just offer an unlocked GSM phone sold through the Apple Store at a fair price without all the BS?? Is that too much to ask??? Apparently so.
Hahahah you have drawn all those conclusions and Apple hasnt even announced any details yet?
The problem with cellphones is: they don't sell unless they're offered together with a carrier-contract that allows for the phone to be sold at a significantly lower price. Hardly anyone ever pays full price for a phone because we have gotten used to prices in the 200$ range while the phones actually cost 4 to 5 times as much in the open market. If Apple decided to sell the phones directly, only enthusiasts would buy - but Apple wants to reach a mass-market that doesn't check apple.com every 5 minutes.
So I'm pretty sure the Cingular thing is true - which leaves me very much disappointed as I don't live in the US. It wouldn't be the first time Apple treats European customers as second-class citizens. Actually - this happens with almost every other product they offer. Don't know why I keep on buying from them, actually - as Apple clearly doesn't care about the European market even though they have a much larger market share here then they do in the US. Obviously, they can afford to ignore us.
I seriously doubt that it's going to be "just like any other phone". And Apple has to compete in an environment in which most comparable devices are not unlocked, and their price is subsidized by the contracts attached to them. Have you ever seen an unlocked phone in a retail store at what you would consider a "fair price"?If this is true, then it sucks. Basically, just like any other phone branded with all kinds of Cingular crap that we will have to pay a boat load of money for to get unlocked & thats sold through Cingular stores?? Yeah, way to shake up the system, Apple.
Why the hell can't they just offer an unlocked GSM phone sold through the Apple Store at a fair price without all the BS?? Is that too much to ask??? Apparently so.
If the phone is unlocked, you can expect the price to be bumped up by $200-$300.
True, but the WSJ is hardly ever wrong about this stuff. And it being within hours of the keynote, seems pretty likely.
Hopefully, someone messed up at the WSJ & Apple will go the other way.
I suspect that eventually an unlocked phone (with a correspondingly higher price) will be offered in the EU, but probably not right away. This will likely be a staged introduction, much like iTunes, since carriers and coverage vary from country to country.
Um....so far, Sprint's the only one who's firmly commited to deploying WiMax in the future.
T-Mobile USA will unlock any phone for free, you just have to call them up for the code (for one reason or another, the representative didn't have a code available immediately for my latest phone, but offered to call me on my schedule when it came in, and sure enough she did). All you need is a non-T-Mobile SIM card, which they generally suggest to use a friend's Cingular, but for me since I had a left-over Telefonica card from Spain I used that. But yeah, didn't cost a dime. Iif Cingular is charging to unlock that's kind of sleazy.
yeah, this is very likely going to happen. But it's small comfort. Imagine Apple had introduced their music store in Europe first and US citizens had to wait for two years to get their own. All US citizens, except for those living in California who have two wait a year longer because Apple decided that California isn't important enough a market.
That's exactly what Apple did over here. Come on - we're not the third world here. The EU has 450 million citizens. Switzerland (albeit not part of the EU) is one of the richest countries in the world. Still, we're obviously not worth it.
Exactly. It will be more than just another phone, which is why it should be sold as a media device through Apple & NOT through Cingular.
Its my impression that anything branded Apple should be sold through the Apple stores. And if this is the case with this "phone" being offered by Cingular, it will be the first time (to my knowledge) that anything made directly by Apple won't be sold through their stores.
What if people hate Cingular but love Apple? Are those people just screwed?? Better yet, we will have to pay up the butt for the phone & have to deal with 3rd parties/eBay to get the device. Sucks. It just takes away from the experience.
I don't wanna see the "iPhone" being advertised by ***** Cingular Wireless.