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Turned Off iPhone Gets $4800 Bill from AT&T
Tech.Luver writes "Jay Levy says he has been stung by Apple's iPhone pact with AT&T after he took an iPhone on a Mediterranean cruise.
They didn't use their phones, but when they got back they had a 54-page monthly bill of nearly $4,800 from AT&T Wireless.
The problem was that their three iPhones were racking up a bill for data charges using foreign phone charges. The iPhone regularly updates e-mail, even while it's off, so that all the messages will be available when the user turns it on. ""
This is why things should actually be OFF when you turn them off. What if it interferes with hospital equipment like other cells, even if it's off?
When you go out of the country, just yank the battery out.
Oh, wait...
ccalam - acoustic versions of new songs.
Why should he be hit with a $4,800 bill when he thought that the device was off? If anything, why shouldn't AT&T and Apple be legally liable for deceiving him into thinking that the device was turned off when in fact it wasn't.
I wonder why there are so many posts saying to wait to take the battery out?
Virtual Betting on Facebook for non-geeks.
I think that covers the situation nicely.
34486853790
Connection too slow for X forwarding? Try "ssh -CX user@host"
The iPhone updates email even when it's off?
Then how is it legal to carry it on airplane or somewhere where it requires to operate in complete radio-off mode?
Quidquid latine dictum sit, altum videtur
I wonder why he didn't just take out the battery.
I wonder why he brought an IPhone on a trip to Europe. He's probably wondering why he bought an IPhone.
[Insert pithy quote here]
Your phone stays on, running programs and checking services even after you have switched it off. You can't get much more different than that!
If the international data plan charges $24 per 20MB, and they got a bill for $4800, that means the 3 phones, while turned off, downloaded a total of around 4GB. WTF?
I hadn't known there were so many idiots in the world until I started using the Internet -Stanislaw Lem
1. Travel overseas and rack up huge iPhone bill /.
2. Submit your story to blogs, forums, and
3. ????
4. Profit
5. Pay your iPhone bill
ScienceSeeker.org
Sleep: Press sleep/wake button briefly. Off: Hold button for several seconds, slide red slider control that shows up. Of course it downloads new messages when the display is sleeping. There'd be no point to sleep if it didn't.
So when the phones "off" it communicates, and you can't kill it all together by removing the battery?........
Coming soon to the iStore, the iCoffin, a lead lined box designed for when you need to take your phone out of the country, or near medical equipment.
Be the envy of the Intensive Care ward with your small and portable iCoffin weighing only 1 tonne, marvel at its lead casing, lick its tasty exterior and be a role model for Chinese toy makers everywhere!
Witty Comment Here
The only correct resolution is for Apple & ATT to eat these charges until the iPhone's GSM radio can be set to OFF when not inside the coverage of the selected carrier.
Democracy is a sheep and two wolves deciding what to have for lunch. Freedom is a well armed sheep contesting the issue
Wow, a knowledgeable and informative post. Too bad it's the only one so far...
This guy's the limit!
Normally it doesn't. Most critical equipement is designed to be solid.
*BUT* on the other hand, the designer didn't have the opportunity to run tests between their product and every fucking crazy stuff emitting radio-noise that a patient may try to subject it to.
Phone are forbidden to be on the safe side of things, not because all medical equipement is so sensitive that the whole hospital will crash if a GSM phone comes by.
(And sometimes, there are suprising interactions, like the iPods' touchwheel interfering with pacemakers)
On the other hand, that doesn't prevent the iPhone from having a mode where it is actually off.
"Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]
When you push the button at the top once, it puts the phone to sleep. When you hold the "sleep" button down for 3 seconds, it actually turns off- totally off.
Maybe they should have done that- instead of wondering why their "off" phones were still "turning on" to ring.
www.GrenadeHop.com
I call BS on this. I've never noticed my iPhone updating email when it's off. Can anyone else confirm this?
I didn't realize organ trading was allowed in the US.
We all know their methods equate with concept of crooky practices passing as 'business'. But this time, apple is caught in the mess too.
Read radical news here
Could be the ridiculous rates you get charged by operators in Europe.
Last year, a colleague and I were staying in London and he called our local travel office to make some changes to the flight. He was on the phone for 30 minutes (mostly on hold) and he was presented with a bill for $600 (300 pounds). Now, you tell me what the rate was...
Anyway, he just refused to pay it, and the manager eventually took it off. But still... seems like a lot of places are set up to cheat the unwary traveler.
You were mistaken. Which is odd, since memory shouldn't be a problem for you
That's it -- I'm simply going to have to not use my PrOn-A-Day screen saver during my month-long Child Labor Personal Services research trip to Thailand. Maybe Penny Arcade instead!
Pacifist paratroopers yell, "Ghandi!" when they jump.
This does tend to happen on smart phones, not just the iphone. My Treo acted the same way and racked up $300 when I tried to cancel my unlimited data plan to see if I could get by on per minutes charges. It was making connections on its own even when I thought the phone was off. This is also the reason why the battery lasts so much longer when you manually turn off the phone via the Wireless Manager instead of trying to just use the "off" button.
"boycottcingular.com" is now the new "boycottatt.com".
now we need to go OSS in diesel cars
But the guy was on a cruise BOAT.
Look, that's why there's rules, understand? So that you think before you break 'em. (Terry Pratchett)
It's so intuitive!
Analogies don't equal equalities, they are merely somewhat analogous.
Hopefully "after this gets publicised" more people will bother to read the manual which clearly states in Chapter 2 "The Basics" (page 14) how to turn the iPod completely off.
No, people just have to learn the difference between "sleep" and "power off".
From the grandfather article:
"In countries outside the plan, charges can run from $5 to $20 per megabyte, said Ben Wilson, editor of iPhone Atlas, a Web site owned by the online news company CNet."
I'm guessing that the middle of the Mediterranean is outside of the covered countries. It also says they were checking a total of seven different email accounts. 7 accounts * 20$/MB could add up pretty quickly, 35MB per email account would do it.
And as you tread the halls of sanity, You feel so glad to be, Unable to go beyond. I have a message, From another time..
1. Take large sheet of tinfoil
2. Wrap that sucker up like a ham-and-Limburger sandwich
3. Explain to the nice folks at the X-ray machine why that suspicious package is your iPhone
4. Be unable to get emergency calls from your family at home while on your Mediterranean cruise
Of course, there's always the simple, brute-force power-down solution: the iHammer. (Can you tell how unimpressed I am with this overpriced, overhyped gewgaw?)
"My strength is as the strength of ten men, for I am wired to the eyeballs on espresso."
I've used Cingular for three years now, with no surprises and no unpleasantness. I alsays got an itemized bill showing calls placed and minutes used in those calls, and never went over my minutes.
Then AT&T bought them out, and I got a nasty surprise in the mail - instead of my normal <$50 bill, it was doubled. And the bill was no longer itemized; there was no way to do the math myself.
Then the next bill came - GULP! Four hundred God damned dollars! And still not itemized.
AT&T is run by thieves. I'm using a cheap Trac phone now until I can find another carrier. AT&T are now in my "Die, damn you" list of evil corporations. Sony replaced Microsoft as first place in my list of Pure Evil (TM) corporations when they trojaned my PC with their BMG XCP rootkit, now MS has slid to #3. AT&T is now a very close second to Sony. May their President, CEO, board of directors, and stockholders all catch cancer and aids and die horribly, and may that God damned company go bankrupt and be liquidated.
Mods, this isn't flamebait it's an informative FLAME. As I'm posting AC you know I'm not karma-whoring.
As I'm too busy unsucsessfully chasing women to blog about evil corporations lately, this is probably all I'll have to say about these bastards.
-mcgrew (sm62704)
... whoever tagged this story ipwned. Thank you. :-)
Best. Tag. Ever.
I would say "because he shouldn't have to". I mean, you and I would think of that if we realized that it was accessing the network even when "off" but I wouldn't expect an average person to think that far into it. And since Apple is trying to create a product to be marketed to the average person, they should make some relatively simple option for saying "off means off".
10 FILL MUG WITH COFFEE
20 DRINK COFFEE
30 GOTO 10
Many here have commented that there is an 'airplane mode' for the thing, and that's what he should have used. Maybe so, but that is counterintuitive to the average user. He's not on the plane anymore!
If there were a selection called "Hotel Mode" that did the same thing, would you expect him to choose that when boarding an aircraft? No.
How about a simple "Off". Trying to be too cute with the operations makes people like this frustrated. And gives the company bad press.
Oh, dude's not alone. I'd much rather have hospital equipment designed such that it doesn't malfunction in the presence of a cell phone, than I would rely on the adroit and vigilant shepherding of electronic gadgets by worried family and friends who come to visit me in hospital. In this situation you fix the problem in the place where it's relatively easy to fix in a reliable way (i.e. by shielding the electronic gear from other signals at manufacturing time) rather in than in a zillion places (random heads of random unpredictable people) which are, every single one of them, prone to human error.
Since you seem so inclined, I suggest you instead thank the gods that these decisions are not up to you. The fact that other people make them might save your life one day.
If you mod me down, I shall become more powerful than you could possibly imagine.
>> Sleep: Press sleep/wake button briefly. Off: Hold button for several seconds, slide red slider control that shows up.
Or press up, up, down, left, down, up, left, right, right, down.
This is one of the many reasons I have not used AT&T in years. I actually just quit a job with a contractor for AT&T's U-Verse service, and the way they look at customer service is horrible. I think it's time congress takes a look at 'Ma Bell and gets rid of the re-formed monopoly. In so many areas the customers have no other choice for service. Also, if any of you have that AT&T U-Verse service, call in and tell them that you are going to cancel unless they give you a $90 credit. All of their tech support reps are required to give out up to $90 if you threaten to cancel.... too bad AT&T wireless doesn't work the same way :(
I'm not sure I feel a lot of sympathy here. I mean, that is a *huge* bill, but the situation seems completely obvious. The iphone frigging buzzes to alert you that you have new mail. Did this guy think it was magic leprechauns that were delivering that information?
Also..
1) User is an idiot and doesn't know the difference between 'off' and 'standby.'
2) There is an 'update email manually' setting, which actually I *thought* was the default behavior, though I could be wrong on that count.
----------------- Oink. Moo. rarr! -----------------
I think that there are some things that should never be allowed for AC's 'Funny' is top of the list.... Of course, I'd remove the ability to post AC altogether, so it's probably a good think I'm not in charge...
A positive attitude may not solve all your problems, but it will annoy enough people to make it worth the effort.
It has a 'airplane mode' setting. Of course, it certainly isn't obvious to a normal person that an 'off' device could be expected to transmit.
XML is like violence. If it doesn't solve the problem, use more.
And he brought it with him, because... why, exactly? You're on a mediterranean cruise and alledgedly your phone just happened to be there too. Switched off all the time.
Yea right. MY guess is that he did indeed switch it on occasionally. If only to show it off to his fellow iPassengers.
B.
Every experiment which ends in a big bang is a good experiment.
More to the point, this is Apple we're talking about here. The company out to make computing useable for the masses, etc etc. So far as I'm concerned, this scenario should have been easily predictable ... at least, it should have warned the user that, hey, you're operating on a goddamned foreign network. Hell, my Sanyo does that much for me.
The higher the technology, the sharper that two-edged sword.
Unless you have a simple pay-as-you-go phone or device, it's too easy to overspend in a situation like this where you just have NO IDEA how much your device is costing you on a moment-by-moment basis.
What I'd appreciate is a device that lets you enter an EXPECTED monetary budget for its use, and safeguards to make sure you don't use the device in a manner that exceeds your expectations for how expensive its use should be.
The instant it began international data roaming, sirens should have sounded alerting the user that the device is now operating in a mode contrary to the user's financial expectations.
I'm sure it has an alert when it's battery needs recharging. No such luck when it starts draining your bank account.
Is the difference between sleep and off obvious to a non-technical person? Is there a way to turn it off really? Does the iPhone explicitly show that it is in sleep vs. off? While in sleep, how is a typical user supposed to know it's still transmitting? Can you point to any other cell phone that behaves this way?
My laptop wireless interfaces are not active during sleep. The closest analogy I can think of is the Wii, and that isn't a mobile device attempting to use a quite likely charge-per-usage network constantly.
Apple's standard is simple and straightforward. There is a balance here to be struck between convenience and, well, this. At the least, the standby/sleep mode should have a fee-less way of determining if the transaction would be built into the plan before executing it. If it would cost extra, and you are in sleep mode, don't do it. Even then that won't be convenient for the common user to comply with airline requests, with most people thinking it would be the one button that makes it go dark.
XML is like violence. If it doesn't solve the problem, use more.
I suppose when your in a foreign country, you should remove your sim card from the iphone (normally I would say remove the battery but in this case...the sim card).
I guess I'm just searching for some ulterior motive, but... Do any red flags go off when the customer suddenly starts to rack up unusually large fees, like credit cards do? Or are bills like these actually paid off often enough that they just send the bill in hopes that the customer actually means to spend a few grand?
"It looks like you're attempting to avoid roaming charges. Would you like help?"
Apple has once again made the paperclip a critical part of every Machead's toolbox. Pop the SIM out.
If J.K.R wrote Windows: Puteulanus fenestra mortalis!
Why on earth would three "businessmen" bother to take their iPhones abroad but switched off? These are expensive gadgets, and if I wasn't planning to use my iPhone on my trip to Tangiers I would simply leave it and its charger at home.
I don't own an iPhone (how could I, I live in Europe) so correct me if I'm wrong. I agree that users of anything (be it a phone, pda or a piece of software) should RTFM... But I also think that this is somewhat of a counter-intuitive design which defies the principle of least surprise. When I hit some device's power button I expect it to power down, not sleep. I think it would be more reasonable to make "off" the default option and offer the sleep mode as an alternative than the way it is now. But that's just my silly view of things..
If by intuitive you mean "identical to every other smartphone on the market", and in fact, probably identical to most REGULAR cell phones on the market (name one phone that you can press the power button one time and it's off -- all require you to hold it), then yes, you're correct, extremely intuitive.
I've seen a lot of people talking about airplane mode or how to turn the phone off, but how about if you just want to leave the phone on to receive emergency phone calls, but not rack up huge data charges? What's the accepted method of doing that?
So do European roaming plans work in the US, or just in the nicely contiguous countries next door? I don't (on most plans) get roaming charges if I go from Ohio to Indiana, which is basically the same distance - cell phones in Europe would be completely impractical if you couldn't roam to other European countries with them.
American phone companies suck, but chalking this up to isolationism is just flamebaiting.
This isn't redundant. It's a fair point. This demonstrates some design failure that could have been used to mitigate another had it been done correctly. I know the iPhone is a great device but so much about it is not quite as perfect as it should be. I think I'm going to wait to purchase until v2.
Yeah, so you can carry an iBrick with you on vacation? Maybe they want to use their iPhone for mobile web surfing while connected to WiFi, using the digital camera feature, or just listening to music? Why shouldn't they be able tell the phone-third of the iPhone to shut down while keeping the rest of their features up? Convergence shouldn't have to suck...
You see? You see? Your stupid minds! Stupid! Stupid!
I suspect Mr. Levy never bothered to RTFM on his device, and then left his phone(s) in the "sleep" mode (display off, radios on), for the duration of his cruise. From Page 14 of the iPhone User Guide:
Note that they call it a "Sleep/Wake button", not an "on/off" button, or a "power" button.
Other than that, he could have enabled "Airplane Mode", which does the following (User Guide, page 22):
Oh, and you can also disable automatic checking of email in the iPhone settings. The default behavior is to check every so often, but you can set it to "Manual", which means you have to tell the iPhone to check email, it won't go out automatically and try downloading messages.
There's warnings about "Additional fees may apply" plastered all over the iPhone manual when discussing international roaming, as well. So to all the people crying that this just shows the iPhone is an overhyped piece of crap, or that this is evidence of some sort of collusion between Apple and AT&T to suck their customers dry, get over it. The guy didn't read his manual, and now he's learning that that was a costly mistake. If you go to Ireland with your brand new Nokia E70 or Treo 650, and leave it on, charging, and set to automatically check email periodically, you're going to have the same fucking problem.
The problem was that their three Iphones were racking up a bill for data charges using foreign phone charges. The Iphone regularly updates e-mail, even while it's off, so that all the messages will be available when the user turns it on.
This is bullshit.
It doesn't sound like the unit was powered off. It sounds like the screen was off, and like my old RAZR, the unit will continue to operate in the background while the screen is off. Stupid, lazy consumer didn't bother reading the manual, which clearly discusses how to POWER THE PHONE OFF COMPLETELY and WHAT AIRPLANE MODE IS, which accomplishes the same task this guy required.
Seriously, who the fuck thinks a phone is "off" just because the screen isn't lit up? This is 2007, right? The age of the cell phone cowboy.
There's no flaw here. The vast, vast majority of iPhone users are satisfied that it will happily do its thing while the screen is off, in your pocket. Otherwise, I couldn't be notified of mail whenever I got it.
Next time, if you spend $600 on something, read the motherfucking manual. Apple goes out of their way to write clear, simple manuals for the very reason that people don't want to have to be computer scientists to understand them. Sucks to be you, dude.
Mikey-San
Karma: +Eleventy billion (mostly affected by watching Celebrity Jeopardy)
if I had the points. It's strange to see people defending the phone company on this. Maybe they're knee-jerk IPhone enthusiasts. I keep seeing this same "responsibility" post over and over again. And there's inevitably the same bunch of replies over and over again pointing out the obvious.
Perhaps this graphic representation will help them understand why these charges are so outrageous. Or maybe the "responsibility" people are just trolling.
It breaks my pluginses, my precious!
No, people just have to learn the difference between "sleep" and "a kind of sleep which isn't actually sleep because the phone is actively using the wireless connection without you realizing it".
My phone, a treo, functions basically the same and like basically every phone with a "standby" mode -- when you hit the power button, it turns off, but as the anonying blinky light indicates the cell phone function is still active, meaning it's communicating with the base station. It will receive incoming calls, and receive other updates from the network. However what it doesn't do is automatically make phone calls, or activate GPRS and start downloading crap off the internet, or otherwise doing anything that will cost me money.
That is what is broken about this. Not the difference between "off with wireless enabled" and "really off". It's the difference between "wireless enabled but not used" and "wireless enabled and being used with no consideration of where you are and how much it's going to cost you". It's the difference between merely being connected to the cell network, and using the cell network in ways that result in charges.
It sounds like a matter of defaults. Setting up the phone to by default automatically download emails is a bad decision, because it causes the phone to work contrary to how most people expect -- which is that in standby mode, you aren't accruing data transfer charges.
The enemies of Democracy are
Now they might want to stray somewhat from the "i[Whatever]" branding style and simply call it the "inCase(TM)".
Ba dum, tish...
"What in the name of Fats Waller is that?"
"A four-foot prune."
This hits an important subject though: comprehensive use actually amounts to a lot of energy, which could ultimately lead to a large greenhouse gas footprint. Therefore, a lawsuit ruling that forces companies to produce products that have explicit means for being completely turned off could have more than one beneficial result.
Isn't this whole "off" vs "sleep mode" thing missing the point. From the POV of the average user, if he isn't making calls, receiving calls, reading email, sending email, etc... if *he* isn't using the phone, should he really expect a bill of $4,800?! Most people don't know about whether their phone is connected via WiFi or via the tower. From their perspective, if they aren't using it, they shouldn't be charged for it.
This is the sort of thing an average user would notice a $3-$4 charge for on their bill and call the company and then get the explanation. But to suddenly get hit with a $4,800 bill is simply ridiculous...
- Sleep/Wake vs. Power Off for iPhone
- 300 page phone bill
These issues are really more interesting than they seem on the surface, not merely as iPhone/AT&T/Apple screw-ups (which they admittedly are) but as a really curious class of screw-ups: growing pains. iPhone is causing AT&T some pain because it's bringing a whole bunch of new users to their expensive cell network services who actually use the service, not merely pay for having the service available for rare occasions where the need is so high it overcomes the pain in the ass factor. Sure, there were a handful of geek Treo users who checked email and surfed web pages every day, but they probably turned their paper-bills off after the first big one and moved on, problem "solved" for them because they really were gadget geeks.People have been using their iPhone for weeks without realizing that there is a difference between sleep/wake and power-off. That's really pretty interesting. iPhone is not different from other devices in maintaining this distinction, PalmOS devices have it, for example. However, with a Palm OS device one learns pretty quickly about the difference because they lock up and you gotta reboot 'em. Even people who have owned an iPhone since June 29 may never have had to power cycle their iPhone, and may not realize that the little Sleep/Wake button is not a "Power Off" button. It would be pretty hard to own a PalmOS device for eight or nine weeks without learning that distinction. Probably nobody at Apple thought of that, because they are all geeks and they are intimately familiar with the intended behavior of the device (e.g. how to turn it off when roaming) so they never saw this happen.
The really interesting part is that nobody at AT&T realized this would happen to people, because it probably doesn't happen to other people using other devices. Why not? Well, it certainly isn't because they don't have devices that automatically fetch IMAP or POP email. It's because they were trained by other quirks of the device to learn the difference between OFF and Sleep right away. This "trained" the users to overcome deficiencies in the AT&T billing process (and policies, really). It shouldn't cost that much to use your iPhone anywhere in the world at this point. Those rates are "rape and pillage" rates and phone companies will need to fix that by coming up with more reasonable roaming policies and prices.
It's interesting that none of the trade press analysts like that keen John C. Dvorak dude haven't stopped to ponder why nobody else in the history of AT&T customer smart phone users ever got a 300 page phone bill. The billing system was the same, iPhone users were just a type of customer with a type of device in the system.
As with the sleep/wake issue, again here nobody at AT&T realized this would happen because users of other smart phone devices are clearly not using them the way iPhone users use the iPhone. iPhone users caught AT&T by surprise because they are clearly surfing the web more often than users of other smart phones, as evidenced by the scale of the paper bill problem. This difference will probably start showing up in the web browser usage statistics within a few months once there are a couple million iPhone users, enough to compare to other platforms. The stats will reveal undeniably different usage patterns, as though it were not a pain in the ass and they could actually read the web pages they fetched.
Suddenly AT&T has a million ordinary non-geek users surfing the web on their phone every day (including google maps). That's what broke their billing system. The sleep/wake issue is just like that. A million smartphone users who haven't had to power cycle their device in two months so they don't even realize that sleep mode isn't "off". It hasn't happened before, apparently.
If you mod me down, I shall become more powerful than you could possibly imagine.
Fourteen pages into a 120-page manual, for a simple, vital command. Jesus, even my iPod Shuffle came with a quick reference sheet the size of a playing card.
Well that's not easy when "sleep" is deliberately designed to appear as "off". Is it clear when you "sleep" it that it might be accruing charges? Having to read a fucking manual to find that out is UNACCEPTABLE. What crappy product design.
To most people, sleep will be similar to standby - and I know that my TV doesn't keep showing picture sin standby, my VCR doesn't record TV shows in stand-by.
Similarly, if my PC is connected to the web and I put it in hibernate, it doesn't still download pictures.
Standby vs sleep vs hibernate vs off... is it any wonder people get confused?
And I thought the whole marvel of ipods and iphones was that they were supposed to be so intuitive to use that you didn't need to read the manual!
----------------------------------- My Other Sig Is Hilarious -----------------------------------
Apple should learn a thing or two from XP and offer users a variety of power down options when engaging sleep mode.
I am becoming gerund, destroyer of verbs.
I just came back from 2 weeks in Australia with my iPhone, and even having it on a couple of hours a day to surf or check email over wifi, I didn't rack up a single cent of roaming charges. The TFA leaves out two bits of information. For one, you have to specifically activate international roaming at AT&T's web site or an AT&T store for any AT&T phone to hook up to any network overseas. Secondly, unlike a Blackberry, the iPhone does not check email periodically, this was much criticized by many, even here on Slashdot. It's actually a bit of a pain even in the US, you have to turn on the phone AND go to mail to get updates. The only email that can be pushed is Yahoo email
The T-Mobile Sidekick\Danger Hiptop has the ability to turn off data roaming, or even the entire radio. Surely this wouldn't be too hard to implement on the iPhone?
"Witty Phrase."
In your feeble attempt to preserve the Latin plural of 'antenna' you neglected to note that it has two forms, nominative and accusative plural. Accusative is proper when the word is the object of the sentence, as in your post. But, you used the nominative.
I kicked the antennas.
The antennae kicked me.
Note the difference. In the future, please do not hyper-correct for Latin properness unless you're willing to do it properly. Thanks.
occultae nullus est respectus musicae - originally a Greek proverb
Of course it downloads new messages when the display is sleeping. There'd be no point to sleep if it didn't.
Really? How about the ability to receive incoming calls? Wake on timer functions? Ability to use the device without waiting for the OS to restart?
There are _plenty_ of applications for sleep mode. I don't see the benefit, in fact, of being able to switch off the display without also disabling other potentially unwanted functions of the device. Wouldn't a "lock buttons/display screensaver" mode be more useful?
I would have really liked to put a Guatemalan pay-as-you-go SIM card in the iPhone but we all know that's not possible right now. I probably would have let it roam for emergency use in Guatemala but since I wasn't sure I could totally stop data access I went for being sure.
Actually roaming capability totally depends on your mobile carrier. I'm in Australia, and big companies like Telstra (Aussie equivalent of your ATT), Vodafone and Optus have roaming agreement with practically the whole planet. I brought my cell phone on roaming to the US, Canada and China and can use it albeit with neck-strangling roaming charges.
For the American, this is not a problem of isolationism or anything. It's just simply corporate greed, nothing more. Anywhere in the world is the same. You should take a look at the prices here in Australia before the mobile operator called "3" came into the market and forces everyone to lower their prices. Right then, everyone realized how crazily overpriced mobile service really was.
Nah, old words. Just took them out for a walk to amuse myself. The phrase "adroit and vigilant" will be recognized by students of political theory or the cold war. It was used in 1947 by George F. Kennan, the architect of the "containment" strategy. Here's the original paper: The Sources of Soviet Conduct.
If you mod me down, I shall become more powerful than you could possibly imagine.
You can actually turn an iPhone off. These people left their iPhones on standby and thought they were turned off. Just because the screen is black doesn't mean the device is off.
That's not the problem. Standby vs truly off should not matter other than 1) battery life and 2) receiving network updates and the delay to reconnect to the network when you decide you need to use the phone function. Standby should not result in $4,800 worth of charges, and I say that knowing full well the difference between standby and off. I'd be pissed as hell if I found out my phone was racking up data charges "on my behalf".
THIS is the problem:
"The iPhone regularly updates e-mail, even while it's off, so that all the messages will be available when the user turns it on."
Making that the default behavior is a stupid decision, and it's one that is even as we speak costing customers money when they may not be realizing it. Automatically using the data connection without regard to the cell phone plan is completely stupid. Does it know the difference between peak and off-peak hours? Does it know what the customer's monthly data quota is? It apparently doesn't know when the customer is in international roaming!
Having that default behavior may have been sensible if Apple knew that the only plans that would work with an iPhone were 100% global unlimited plans. Then they could assume it's okay to download things whenever it feels like. But with the reality of cell phone plans? No way. That's retarded. And it is not these peoples' fault that they didn't expect their phone to work that way.
The enemies of Democracy are
You could have had a +5 funny if only you had said "up, up, down, down, left, right, left, right, B, A, start"
1) My iPhone in standby mode does not DL my email until I hit the email button at which point it connects and begins the transfer of the email. This is a setting in the email settngs preferences. By default it is set to manual. This is where I left mine.
2) My iPhone, when it is actually turned off, as opposed to in standby mode (i.e. hold the top button down for 3 seconds rather than just pressing it) it doesn't even receive calls, much less email or anything else.
3) Does anyone on slashdot even own an iPhone? Most of the comments are completely clueless as to the actual operation of the device.
Noticed that, did you Capitan Obvious?
Ever heard of a joke? Why yes, yes I have - I suppose you missed the part where I state in italics that I think AC's shouldn't be allowed 'Funny" type posts... stupid git
A positive attitude may not solve all your problems, but it will annoy enough people to make it worth the effort.
But were you really turned off, or just in standby mode?
Awesome.
Just once I'd like someone to call me 'Sir' without adding 'You're making a scene.'
For example, if you manage (somehow) to have an unsecured wireless router setup, and someone downloads questionable material while wardriving, does that make YOU responsible because you didn't memorize the manual or keep up to date on /.?
Most people buy cel phones predominately for the purpose of placing phone calls, then the stoopid ring tones, then the stoopid wallpaper, then the stoopid camera, then the stoopid games, and then the stoopid e-mail and stoooooooopid web browsing capacity. Oh, and the ePenis overcompensation factor.
The above features reign far and above cracking the 100+ page instruction manual included with today's cellular phones.
Just because you can mod me down, doesn't mean you're right. Shoes for industry!
This guy got off with CHEAP data rates. I have $960 of additional data charge while I was in Mexico for the week. I did use the "ipod" functions but not safari nor mail applications. For the $960 the phone transfered about 6MB of data.
Of course it downloads new messages when the display is sleeping. There'd be no point to sleep if it didn't.
Generally speaking, the purpose of sleep mode in phones is to allow them to still receive phone calls while they're "off." Not to allow them to MAKE phone calls secretly. As a matter of fact, I just took an email capable phone on an international cruise and there were no unexpected charges. Actually, even when I have the phone "on" it doesn't download email or otherwise actively call the network without my request.
It seems to me that since the iPhone is currently a domestic-only device, that it should have a setting to allow international data roaming and that that setting should default to OFF.
In any event, the larger issue is not that the phone downloads email, but that there doesn't seem to be a warning that you WILL be charged an exorbitant rate for email if you leave the country, period The disclaimer that "substantial charges may be incurred if phone is taken out of the U.S. even if no services are intentionally used" could be interpreted to mean that the phone will rack up charges in the event that someone calls you or texts you. Not merely for being hooked up to the network.
There are two kinds of people: 1) those who start arrays with one and 1) those who start them with zero.
Does the phone still ring if it's sleeping? If not, it's not intuitive that it would be checking e-mail. I would expect that if sleep shuts off the phone, it shuts off the phone from accessing the internet too.
When you shut your phone, does it turn off? Or when you stop using a candybar, doesn't the screen go off? Yet the phone is not off. People know they have to press something to really turn "off" a phone, as per every other phone ever made.
After all, how is a phone supposed to receive calls if it's really off? There needs to be a difference between a sleep mode and off, and this is obvious on the iPhone.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Furthermore, don't Blackberrys automatically receive email while they are asleep?
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Comment removed based on user account deletion
I agree with the comments further down that this is a user-error. But I also think that there is a usability-issue on part of Apple here.
In the home network, there's free data, as I understand, and the roaming charges are high. I have cheap data in my home network, and expensive when roaming abroad. So when I step out of a plane and turn on my phone, I get a nice warning: "You're not in your homenetwork. MMS reception is off". MMS reception is the only automatic data-service on the phone.
Look in the configuration, surely enough: "MMS reception: Automatic (only home network) / Manual / Always".
It would make pretty good sense to add a similar option for the automatic email checking.
I'm not too much into voice, but I can attest for data. I had a "mobile broadband" plan in Poland with Era, but roaming to Germany or Italy was impossible. The data charges were outrageous and as such, roaming was disabled by default.
The good thing is that there are now data-plan prepaid/pay-as-you-go simcards available.
When I was in Italy, I paid 50 euros to Vodaphone for a 30-day pay-as-you-go data plan. That was a steal compared to what my roaming charges would've been.
The Samuel L Jackson version of the iPhone manual:
Chapter 2 "The Basics" (page 14) how to turn the iPod motherf***** off.
WARNING: Smartphones have side effects--most of them undocumented.
Even my old GSM provider in eastern Europe (I used to live in Hungary) warned its customers with detailed information on how to turn their voice mail box off in case they leave the country, explaining in detail, that the call would go abriad, and then come back, thus causing a double charge.
AT&T should have a similar warning. On the other hand the iPhone should not do ANYTHING while off. Not beep, not wake up, not chek mail. NOTHING.
The only thing I expect from a phone when it is off, to serve as an alarm clock as normal phones do.
I would advise iPhone users to pull the battery, but then you say..... the battery cannot be pulled. It sucks, and unless the documentation in the Apple manual clearly states that the iPhone does update mail when off, I would be on my way to a lawyer and have apple pay my bill to their one and only partner.
Updating mail is off my default... but if you've turned that on, you can set the update period to "manual" so you don't accidentally have it fire up.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
That would be a great idea. And the really neat thing is that you can.
Send the pieces to AT&T along with that bill.
No way I would ever pay that.
Anyone else notice how AT&T ended up back in the phone business, after helping with the wiretapping. AT&T, formerly Singular, wiretapping, now AT&T again?
Blogging because I can...
Having said that its become pretty tricky to remember all the functions\features\keys etc of all these devices. The old staple "rtfm" means to wade through a manual lined with key strokes for every situation and of course the UI is all somewhat different to each other be it phones, blackberrys, cameras, let alone the computer. My point is this, its user error, but its easily done.
What I'm concerned about here is why did he get a $5000 bill without authorizing it? A feature I suggest we see on these cellphones\iphones or even better, the carriers, is a $ amount (not minutes used) that just cuts off and if one hits it they have to opt in via some method to turn it back on - a simple pin would do. Alas I'm sure the carriers won't do this and I doubt the iPhone knows...so a law, much like the one to allow users to carry cellphone numbers across carriers, is in order.
Of the $4800, only $10 was data charges, the rest was service and regulatory fees and taxes.
Everything seems to say the phone was "off" but as far as I can tell it was on standby and not off. I haven't read my manual but even I know that when the phone is on standby it checks my e-mail every hour. If it was on standby then it's their fault as far as should be concerned. If it was actually off, as in they held down the on/off switch and slide the bar to off, then that'd be news to me.
They had three iphones? Which they took with them on a Caribbean vacation cruise? Fuck 'Em. If they're content to waste an average man's yearly earnings on two weeks of R&R, let them ride that bill all the way. Hopefully they'll learn a lesson about rampant consumerism and choose to live a simpler lifestyle.
Oh yeah. Oops. I guess it is bad UI design after all.
For the same reason that someone who signs a contract without reading it and/or insisting on changes, deserves to be screwed. It's called a manual, it comes with the device, and you are allowed to read it. There is no "deception", only ignorance on the part of the user.
Terms in a contract are not always upheld. If they are too one sided, or absurd, a judge may rule something unconscionable. This is especially true for adhesion contracts, "take it or leave it", and even more so when there is a power imbalance between the parties such as large corp v a consumer.
When you shut your phone, does it turn off?
Er... Yes, actually. And so it has been with every mobile I've ever owned.
People know they have to press something to really turn "off" a phone, as per every other phone ever made.
Apparently you are mistaken on both counts.
After all, how is a phone supposed to receive calls if it's really off?
It's not! If I wanted to receive calls, I wouldn't have turned my phone off, would I?
There needs to be a difference between a sleep mode and off, and this is obvious on the iPhone.
Apparently you are mistaken on that one, too.
If you disagree, post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like.
That's not true. Every phone I've ever owned has had an obvious indicator when it is in sleep mode vs. Off. Either they have a blinking LED, or the screen's backlight goes out. However, the screen doesn't turn totally off. It's darkened, but not Off. If there's not indicator that an iPhone is in sleep mode, then that is a problem. I've never owned a phone that turns totally blank when it is in sleep mode. FYI - I'm buying two iPhones for my wife and I for Christmas. I think that the above issue is a legitimate problem, but not big enough for me to reconsider buying it.
I now have the evil AT&T, and I actually think T-Mobile is less evil than the others, but....
...........
They only have service in large cities, so if you were flying from Chicago, to LA, you prolly only hit a few cell towers along the way.
God , I hate AT&T
* Carthago Delenda Est *
I just traveled to Germany and France several weeks ago for family reasons. Needless to say I called ahead of time to AT&T and had an international plan placed on my account, and they advised me of several things which they do to all customers traveling abroad. 1) You will accrue charges if someone leaves a voicemail while your phone is on. 2) You will accrue charges for using the data (email, sms, etc) 3) If you want to avoid charges, keep your phone OFF, or turn off TD/RD. Standby will not stop charges from accruing. 4) I have a BlackBerry 8100, and sad to say my service in Europe was amazing. I got back to Boston, and standing in Logan Airport to see 1 bar of service almost made me cry. So the lesson to learn is to follow the old adage: Proper Prior Planning Prevents Piss Poor Performance.
Not only is it more then just a phone, but I have taken phones with me on trips back to the states that only work in Europe. Why? I used them on the way to and from the airport and wasn't prepared to throw it out just because it wouldn't work in the US.
I guess they can't argue with this saying 'well you should have removed the battery' because they soldered that fucker in! Funny, I have a co-worker who just went to the Dominican Republic on vacation with his iPhone. I should tell him to check his bill.
I just wanted to recap some of the more prevalent comments I've read here in this thread:
1) The fact that the iPhone has a sleep/wake button is unacceptable, because it "should" be an on/off button (ignoring the fact that every other smartphone, hell, and every TV & A/V component made in the last 15 years, operates EXACTLY the same way).
2) Users should NOT have to read the manual to fully understand how the iPhone works (despite the fact that "RTFM" would be tossed around with alarming regularity in almost all other situations).
3) The iPhone continues to check e-mail while asleep (does any smartphone NOT check e-mail while asleep, when it is still receptive to incoming calls/text messages?).
4) The fact that the iPhone has a sleep mode that is different than "fully off" is a major design flaw, and its existence is simply unconscionable (as mentioned earlier in this list, sleep mode is pretty standard on electronic devices these days).
5) Calling the setting that turns off all radio transmission/reception "Airplane Mode" is counterintuitive & deceptive because users won't know to use it when they're on a boat (even though "Airplane Mode" has been the standard name for this setting at least for the last 5 years, and using even the smallest amount of common sense would cause one to use this setting in all situations where radio use is to be avoided).
6) Apple & AT&T are basically mugging people, because the iPhone is not laden with warnings to inform users how their wireless service works (I've had phones purchased from Cingular/AT&T & unlocked phones purchased from 3rd parties in the past, when I took them abroad none of them ever told me I was entering an international roaming area...again, with a smidge of common sense one would notice that it no longer says "AT&T" next to the signal strength indicator and would assume that that's financially bad news).
Are you people serious? How can you type this stuff without feeling the least bit silly? Has the anti-Apple, anti-iPhone stance so blinded you to the fact that, behind the big, flashy screen, gee-whiz functionality and prominent Apple logo (and, until last week, the absurd price tag), the iPhone is basically IDENTICAL to just about every other smartphone (and majority of cellphones) out there? I mean, I expect a certain amount of schadenfreude and Jobs-bashing in a thread like this, but some of these comments have crossed right through the Laughable Town and have landed firmly in the Land of Pathetically Grasping At Straws.
Now many of you have called bullshit on those that have used these arguments, and it's admirable that, regardless of how you feel about the iPhone, Apple, Steve Jobs, the city of Cupertino, or anything else that could color your judgement, you've been able to put all that aside and objectively state that, in this case, the user was an idiot and deserved to get hit with the giant phone bill. Sadly, your voices of reason were drowned out by repetitive/redundant crazy talk.
Just once I'd like someone to call me 'Sir' without adding 'You're making a scene.'
This doesn't surprise me. AT&T / Cingular will do whatever they can to make sure you accidentally get charged for things. For example, on my Razr phone, they hide the URL function in their phones under settings / web access (at the very bottom) Go To URL (3rd from the bottom) and try to trick you into thinking you have to go into their mediaNet (which is like 100 kB of data usage on it's own), which you dont. MediaNet is by default just an accidental double click on the main scroll pad. The phone freezes and wont allow you to cancel mid-way through transferring. Then they send you text messages which are just from wierd numbers which you get charged for if you open them. Then they try to trick people into downloading things and hide the true costs of doing so (which varies based on your data usage plan). Phones with the push to talk button cannot disable that function and yes, if you have the service you can be accidentally charged for that too.
I guess the only surprising thing is the phone bill was that much, tack off two zeros and I really wouldn't be surprised at all.
Honestly this should be a crime on AT&T / Cingular's part if they do not fully reimburse that. All of this "accidental" crap should be a crime. Every time they spam a text message to their users it's like they are stealing from every person who does not have free text messaging. How much money does a million nickels add up to?
Just remove the battery.
Oh wait.
brilliant. Just strip the guts of a few obsolete commodores for all that shiny aluminum shielding and start wrapping up patients. Hey, everyone looks like a baked potato. I likes it.
There is an old addage in the world of wisdom, Buyer Beware. When you buy a phone, it's not as simple as picking up a phone, and turning it on, you have to sign a contract and things need be set up. So you're in front of a Customer Service Rep for at least 30 minutes, but probably more like 60 - 90 minutes. In all of that time while waiting for the setup, you could be skimming directions. You know what those are, those things that are include even with a box of sillyputty?
Now please don't tell me you spent ~$600+ on the new top of the line - must have it first - gadget and you didn't read the manual. Puh Lease!
These are supposed to be business men right? Business men are usually pretty intelligent and are savy enough to read and bone up on their business tools. Business men run businesses, they are in the business to make money. If their customers didn't read the find print, or whatever crap their selling, they'd say, "You've signed the contract.". Guess what.... they signed the contract.
Unless there was a Billing error, they have no room to bitch.
Life takes interesting turns, but the most interest is when you're off the beaten path.
I recently got a new 8830 which came with no paper manual. There was no notice that informed me that there was a manual included on the CD but I new there would be because of my geek knowledge. The average layman user may get one of these advanced toys because of the style factor or MP3 player or whatever would not have the same knowledge base as one of the average /. readers.
These devices are more than a fancy cell phone with email, it has mp3 and other pda functions. I could understand that the user tryed to turn it off using the off button and not knowing that it is still on. If my phone goes in sleep mode there is still an led indicator which probably is not the case with the iphone. This user may brought his phone with him to store information about his day trip or airplane tickets or may just have brought it to use for mp3s, it really is not up to us to call him an idiot based on this.
As our devices get more complex and the UIs are trying to get more simple but the average user often gets forgotten. As more of these advanced devices become available more average users are buying them. I would guess that more than 75% of phones have cameras built in.
A recent example would be when my father purchased a home theatre system and he could not figure out how to connect it. Years ago one would connect all the coax cables yellow to yellow, red to red, etc to their prospective inputs but now there is hdmi, dvi a&d, component, etc. If its hdmi is it 1.0 or 2.0 both of which may or may not pass audio on the hdmi cable, which is fully capable of it. It took me, which I would call myself an edjucated user, 8 hours to get the system installed including 2 second trips to the store beacuse the manual, sony's, did not state some limitations of its device.
I would say that the average user would have a basic to intermediate understanding of how most of there computer programs operate. Most users probably could not backup their computers and re install windows because they got a rootkit from a cd they wanted to listen to. The average user probably does not have a huge collection of mp3s or know much about drm. As we age the younger generations are growing with this knowledge but I know several people my age (25) that would not have known that the device when off may actually be still on but in an alternate state.
As our devices get more complex and mainstream more than just the savvy business people and the hardcore geeks are purchasing these devices and we should be building to tailor to these new users just as much as to the tech savvy. I do not promote adding something like an any key to a keyboard but give complete manuals with details but also something simple. Dont call (radio)OFF the airplane mode having a icon of an airplane.
Someone mentioned pull the sim card, what if this phone had a cdma mode which often do not have a card.
---The users are not always ignorant, technology is getting more complex leaving the average user behind. The VCR clock was a perfect example of this years ago.
Doh!
Have gnu, will travel.
Your too emotionally charged to understand what he's saying. Most phones even free ones released in the last 3-4 years go into a sleeplike mode called "standby" when not in active use or when you shut it closed (physically like if it's a flip phone). I'll bet your current phone is the same, it uses minimal power and can still receive calls unless you have a brick from 6 years ago.
My samsung A is the same and it takes 2-3 seconds of holding the end button to turn off.
Hmmm... Pie...
The default is in fact to check for mail manually - these people set it to automatically check mail. Of course the real problem here is the insane roaming charges for mobile data, which is no more costly than voice for the operators.
I think they should have done the following though :
1. The phone should not check email periodically on foreign networks without explicit permission (i.e. needs a checkbox 'even on foreign Networks' for the automatic setting).
2. The phone should warn users when accessing the mobile network in other countries, ideally showing the call cost before they use it.
3. The phone should go to a deeper sleep with all radio off when unused for more than 1 hour - saves battery.
4. Have an option not to check email while the screen is asleep.
While I broadly agree with your real point...
...my Sky+ box (essentially a PVR tied to the UK's Sky satellite service) does record shows in stand-by mode. However that makes sense - I don't want to have to leave it on full power all the time to record stuff I've set it to record while I'm out. The iPhone email thing is only in the same category if the automatic email download is normally a zero-cost thing. Otherwise, it's just wrong as a default.
my VCR doesn't record TV shows in stand-by
It's official. Most of you are morons.
Although I wonder, I have no iPhone so I can't check, but is the button labeled "Sleep" or "Power"?
After 3 days without programming, life becomes meaningless
- The Tao of Programming
I wonder what he means by "off". If you use the Airplane switch on your iPhone that kills all wireless signals, phone and wi-fi. But if your actually power it off, well its OFF. does he means he just clicked the top button that turns off the screen. any fools know that the phone isn't off then! (I wish there was a way to turn off AT&T and just use wi-fi, you can go the other way around, turn off wi-fi and just use AT&T).
Service *unf* the customer *unf* service *unf* the customer *unf*
(George Carlin)
I do have a "brick from 6 years ago", near enough. What's your point? It makes and receives calls, sends and receives texts, stores a phone list, and does all of this simply and with good reliability. Why would I spend a fortune or commit to a year or more of dubious price plans on a new network, just to get a different phone?
In any case, the phone I use is irrelevant to this discussion. The fact remains that if a phone has two modes that behave very differently (and getting or not getting a $4,800 bill is "very differently" in my book) then it is poor UI design not to distinguish them clearly. This is not an emotional statement — after all, I'm not the guy out several grand for a simple mistake — it's simply acknowledging a basic usability error rather than joining the collective Apple worship that a scary number of people in this discussion are exhibiting.
If you disagree, post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like.
Actually, you're wrong about your Treo. Even after you put it into sleep mode it will still log itself onto the network and check email if it is configured to do so automatically. Don't believe me? Setup the included Versamail and enable the "autosynch" option.
The big difference is that Palm doesn't configure the Treo to do that automatically. With an iPhone the setup process hooks you up to the email account attached to the phone number with no user action necessary. It's "magic."
As anyone who flies on a plane with a Treo should know, to do a full power down all you need to do is hold the power-off button for ~5 seconds and it will shut down the radio completely. You can tell it is off-net by the fact there's no signal indicator anymore. Matter of fact, my Treo manual highlighted the need to shut down the radio completely when getting on a plane.
I'm not sure what the iPhone process is to go into full radio-off mode but it is hopefully as easy. Whether the manual says so or not I'm not sure. But given "Lord Jobs" rah-rah messages of "it's so easy" then I'm sure many of the faithful declined to read the manual.
I've been on slashdot so long I'm starting to get out of touch with the cool stuff if it ain't on slashdot.
it's admirable that, regardless of how you feel about the iPhone, Apple, Steve Jobs, the city of Cupertino, or anything else that could color your judgement, you've been able to put all that aside and objectively state that, in this case, the user was an idiot and deserved to get hit with the giant phone bill. Sadly, your voices of reason were drowned out by repetitive/redundant crazy talk.
You got this attitude from your mom while she was a clerk at the DMV, right?
The iPhone is a phone. How complicated should one expect phones to be? How expensive should a simple mistake cost? Is it really unimaginable for someone to look at the black screen of the iPhone and think it's "off"?
Here is where you outlined how a user should handle the phones power management (emphasis mine):
You don't see problems with any of this?
First off, you have people reading manuals for phones. Yes I know, RTFM, etc. Really, you need to get over that. People don't read manuals for common items. Moreover, who has the time? You would not want to live in the world where you were forced to read the manual for every device, tool, or piece of software for every new function you envisioned using. That would be a major pain in the ass. I am 100% certain that you have used some piece of technology without reading 100% of the documentation. Not to mention you listed it as page 14 of the manual. 14 pages doesn't sound like much, but it is when I just want to turn off a phone.
Then you go on to list 4 power management functions, which does not appear exhaustive. So we have 4+ ways of "almost but probably not" turning a phone off. That seems clear as day.
Finally, you point out that it is called a "sleep/wake" button and neither an "on/off" nor "power" button. With that sentence you are implying the users are dumb for thinking that button should turn off the phone. However, 2 statements above it you are telling people how to turn off the phone with that same button. So are the users dumb for thinking a power-esque button should manage the power settings including on/off? Or are you dumb for thinking users are dumb for having assumptions that map back to what you just explained?
One final thought. You mentioned this pearl as well:
Yes, maybe he should have enabled "Airplane Mode" despite the obvious fact he was no where near a plane. I often think of applying modal techniques specifically labeled outside of those specifications. Brilliant!
What bothers me more is not that you blame this guy for a very makable mistake, but that somehow you think the costs associated with this "mistake" is justifiable. I'd better hear you say "It was my fault. I should have RTFM. I will wire the funds instantly!" when your next bill comes close to 50x your normal rate.
and avoiding the inevitably annoying conversation with an insufficiently knowledgable customer when the first month's bill arrives with huge data charges is the main reason cell companies like verizon won't let you activate a smartphone unless you also subscribe to some sort of data plan that doesn't charge you for every data transmission.
I mean I'm sure you nerdlings are too smart to let this happen, right? This guy was just too lazy to look at the manual, and the moron is complaining. He's probably one of those guys that wonders why is car windows fog up, when the heat is on on a rainy day and the unit is turned to recirculate.
Shouldn't it be easy for the phone to tell you that you are roaming and that data functionality will be disabled until you are no longer roaming? I drive to Canada on occasion and still make and receive calls. I wouldn't want to have to worry about my phone racking up roaming charges just because I want to leave it on to potentially receive calls.
To turn the radio off one goes to the settings panel and toggles the Airplane Mode. It's the very first setting on that screen.
If you mod me down, I shall become more powerful than you could possibly imagine.
RTFM! (See page 14).
I just read the iPhone manual. Most mail requires you to set the "manual check/autcheck every 15/30/60 minutes" flag. Not too sure about Yahoo, which it states "If you have a Yahoo! email account, email is instantly transferred to iPhone as it arrives at the Yahoo! server." If the guy had a yahoo! account, it could be quite difficult to disable the email check feature. Either way, the guy had to set up the email on the machines. I thought the magic Itunes registration process configured the email.
I am a little surprised that you apparently can't disable the GSM/GPRS without also killing the WiFi. Were I on a foreign trip I might find it worthwhile to have my favorite WiFi enabled gizmo handy for websurfing in Starbucks and the like even when I didn't want to use plan minutes.
I've been on slashdot so long I'm starting to get out of touch with the cool stuff if it ain't on slashdot.
The default is in fact to check for mail manually - these people set it to automatically check mail. Of course the real problem here is the insane roaming charges for mobile data, which is no more costly than voice for the operators.
Yeah, someone else said that it wasn't the default behavior, which makes a lot of my argument moot.
And I agree completely that the ultimate blame lies with AT&T and the other cell providers and their crazy rate plans. Because even if the guy manually turned on automatic downloads, then forgot about it when he traveled abroad and left his phone in standby (which makes sense; if you want to use the phone you don't always want to have to wait to connect to the network first), I find it hard to believe that anyone would associate that behavior with a nearly $5k phone bill.
The enemies of Democracy are
Don't regular cellular phones have the same premise? One press for screen off, hold down for power off?
We went to the Bahamas a few years back. Being a Consultant, I wanted to know who all had called so I left my phone on, even though I never answered it. I got hi with a huge bill the next month because every call that came in got an international charge, then it got forwarded to my voicemail which incurred another international charge. To top this off, free roaming was only in the continental US so I got hit for this too. The phone company (Cingular at the time) did actually reduce the amount, but it was an eye opener.
~AR
In addition, it's unclear from TFA whether the phones were "off" or in standby. Has any checked if auto email checking continues when the phone is actually "off" and/or in standby?
It must have been something you assimilated. . . .
I bet the Zune phone (or "Zone" as I would imagine it'd be called) won't do this.
You still don't get it. I am happy for you that you seem to love bashing the iPhone and other overly complicated pieces of phone technology, but the "sleep mode" people speak of here is a red herring. The iPhone is like any other phone -- either on, or off. When I stop using my iphone, the display goes black to save battery. That's what people here are calling "standby." I don't know a single phone that doesn't power down its display to save battery.
These people were idiots, but hopefully AT&T makes things right-- that overcharge is just absurd.
The *only* difference is that the iPhone has no visible indicator of being on when the screen is black.
However, these people didn't even try to turn their phones off. They simply set them down and assumed that a darkened screen meant it was off.
Where's the story here?
Someone turns on the "always check my email feature" (which defaults to off, as with every other data using cellular appliance), didn't actually turn the phone off, then complained when their standing by phone did exactly what they'd set it to do. You are the weakest link, good bye.
On a side note, does anybody else think Slashdot's going downhill? More and more I'm finding TFAs are nothing more than a half page write up with as much concrete information as a modern election campaign. Even worse when they're a blog entry and you have to follow a link there to actually get somewhere. What gives??!?
Yes, that was uncalled for.
...and that's the way the cookie crumbles.
This slightly tangent to your point, but unlike most companies, Westinghouse televisions have a user-configurable standby mode. You can choose the default instant-on mode, or a lower power standby that takes about 12 seconds to start up, since it's actually booting instead of constantly using extra power to maintain the state of the RAM. The instant-on mode uses 11W when it's "off," and the low-power mode uses 2W when it's "off". It was an easy setting to change via onscreen menus, and it's nice to have the choice.
A.) Remove the SIM card and place it in a safe place.
B.) Switch the iPhone to "Airplane mode", and if you don't wish to read the pamphlet telling you how to do this, simple go to "Settings" (which looks like three gray gears), And by the picture of an airplane done in orange with a black/gray transitioning background with "AIRPLANE MODE" written to the right. It will be in the "off" position. Click on it, and the word "ON" will apear, written in white on an orange/yellow transitioning background. And a little picture of an orange airplane will apear in the upper lefthand corner of the iphone, to the left of the time box. Your iPhone is now not broadcasting or accepting any wireless signals. When you are back in the states, switch it back into the "Off" postion to use it as a phone again.
C.) Throw iPhone over the side of the boat and use your savings to buy a new iPhone.
3 degrees of separation from Vladimir Putin
How do you turn off your phone? Run us through the steps. I suspect it is nearly identical, and requires you to press a button for a couple of seconds -- would that be correct? Walk us through it.
There is no label. I think it is considered the sleep/wake button (per the manual), but that is deceiving. Nobody really "sleeps" their phone. All it does is turn the screen off/lock the phone, just like the feature on many other phones. I don't know how the hell they thought it was a power button. I tap it before i drop my phone in my pocket so I know nothing weird will happen (inadvertant calls, etc.. though it is probably impossible since the proximity sensor near the earpiece would disable the controls when its in my pocket..)
The *only* difference is that the iPhone has no visible indicator of being on when the screen is black.
Well, that and the fact that with the iPhone you can apparently be racking up thousands of dollars of charges while your phone is visually indistinguishable from being switched off. According to the source material cited, the only way you'd know that is if you read small print that runs to nearly 7,000 words, since the summary of the plan features doesn't indicate it.
However, these people didn't even try to turn their phones off. They simply set them down and assumed that a darkened screen meant it was off.
Where does it say that in TFA or any of the stories from other sources linked from it?
If you disagree, post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like.
Yes, it does require a button to be held. But on my phone, if it's on, you can clearly see this from the time display on the LCD and the "on" light flashing every couple of seconds, and when you turn it off, you get a clear indication both audibly and from the screens and lights going off.
The usability problem here isn't requiring the user to switch a phone off, it's the fact that there is apparently no way to distinguish whether the phone is currently off or just in stand-by mode, unless you do something that would bring it out of stand-by or someone happens to call you. That and the fact that this phone's "stand-by" mode isn't really standing by at all, because it's doing very significant, very expensive things in the background.
If you disagree, post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like.
The other mobile devices use a style of email called Push. The Internet protocols, including IMAP and POP3, are a different style called Pull.
Pull is not necessarily a bad thing, provided that it is used as intended. Pull has some definite advantages. The problem comes in when Pull is (ab)used to act like Push, by having the mobile device continuously poll. Even worse is to download content that the user never wanted downloaded. The whole point of IMAP is selective download with the user being part of the selection process.
Blackberry is a Push based process, and (unlike Internet) email it does not do huge content.
iPhone imitates the user experience of Blackberry's Push with Internet email, without any adjustment for the realities of mobile devices. That works only when you have lots of free bandwidth.
The IETF LEMONADE working group, mobile device manufacturers, and mobile phone service companies, have spent considerable effort at defining procedures for using IETF protocols with mobile devices. Critical to this is a mechanism called notification, which in effect is a Push that tells the mobile device to Pull. Done right, it combines the benefit of both strategies.
iPhone doesn't use any of that. Apple thinks that it knows better than anyone else.
It's called ejecting the SIM. It's got a simpler interface than even OSX; an eject button.
I'm no medic, or medical technician, but I'm willing to bet that most EEG machines in the US were not purchased in the last five years, and at least a quarter of them are more than 10 years old.
Even assuming that the cell-phone-hardened variety were no more expensive than the more straightforward type, and assuming that the hardened variety had no drawbacks or problems, it would STILL be prohibitively expensive to replace all the existing machines with the hardened variety.
I'm sorry, but you're being unrealistic. Good engineering can give a solution to many problems, but not all.
Actually, my phone currently looks like it is off even though it isn't. The only way to tell is by pushing buttons. The type of screen it has goes completely black when it isn't on and there aren't any flashing lights.
... never to think of what happens outside their country. Example: most apps only get to support unicode or i18n only after a long time
I'll do the stupid thing first and then you shy people follow...
Somehow, I suspect you'll have other matters on your mind, Senator Craig.
I think that the phone should "know" that it is roaming and warn/deactivate stuff like email, or make an option for it to behave like that. I'd also like the ability to turn off the phone portion and leave the WiFi on. Now that theres been a public incident like this, I hope Apple adds these options.
As far as AT&T goes, I'm betting that they cut a deal with the guy, and he upgrades his plan instead of paying the cash. At least when I hear of cases like this, thats what the mobile carrier has usually done. I think that being able to rack up a $5k charge in the first place is pretty absurd. I can't think of any situation where that kind of a bill is acceptable, and they should really put limits too how high your bill can go.
The person in this article is guilty of not understanding how cell phones in general work and there is nothing to the story that the iPhone's allegedly poor UI is the culprit here. This is just more iFud spin that seems to be so popular with the insecure masses that can't stand the fact that Apple makes a lot of great products.
Er... Yes, actually. And so it has been with every mobile I've ever owned.
Shut. Not shut off. As in "close your RAZR". It would be rather stupid if my clamshell-style phone turned off whenever I closed it.
First off, you don't have one -- neither do I -- I just know that the description of what people are apparently required to do to turn off that phone is the same as every other phone.
As for indication of whether it's been turned off or not... even if there were no indication, the phone is off if I turned it off. If I didn't, logic dictates it's still on. If I did something and the phone never mentioned it was going off (pretty much every phone I've ever seen does some sort of goodbye dance, often playing an obnoxious tune), I'd have to assume it wasn't off.
Well as a counterexample, I just pulled my Sony Ericson K700 out of my pocket and it has a blank screen and no blinking lights. It looks as though it were switch off. If I press any of the keys, the display lights up and thus I can tell it is switched on.
I remember seeing phones that blinked to show they were still switched on but that was years ago. It was more important in the olden days when batteries would run out if you did not use your phone sparingly.
I think a solution to the iPhone problem would be for the setting that controls how often to check for email to be split in to two: one for the home network and one for when roaming. The latter would be set to 'manual' by default. Switching this on would be a good time for it to display a warning about data charges.
That doesn't surprise me, I haven't owned every phone ever made. I was just commenting on my personal experiences. And based upon my personal experience, I can understand how this design flaw (I will call it a flaw) could have caught the two people unaware. Off may be really "Off", but if there's no way to tell if an iPhone is "Off" or "Sleeping" at first glance, then it's a UI design flaw. Especially if that flaw results in a $4800 dollar bill. Now, whether or not Apple/AT&T should have to pay, or if these two people are liars/stupid, that's a separate discussion that I am not concerned with.
PC guy here, but.... don't you drag the Sim to the trashcan? ;)
This is the sig that says NI (again)
Where does it say that in TFA or any of the stories from other sources linked from it?
It's the only possible scenario since when you actually power the phone off, it's completely off.
T Money
World Domination with a plastic spoon since 1984
That second or two of airtime cost me $3.00 on my bill.
Who is your carrier?!?
T-Mobile (with whose phones I have travelled quite a bit), charges $1 per minute in most of Europe. AT&T says they charge $1.29 per minute.
The problem with the iPhone is there has to be a way to turn off EDGE without turning off voice and WiFi. Apple, please fix this!
Well, usually you would, but if you're a hardcore UNIX hacker on a Mac you can bring up a Terminal, type "umount /Volumes/SIM_Card" and then try to extract it with a pair of needle-nose pliers. ;)
I submitted a journal article for the same thing, and will be contesting the bill. Fortunately, that one was only $500, not 10x that. I was hoping to prevent this from happening to someone else, and considered submitting an "Ask Slashdot" about it.
The biggest issue is the fact that, although you can disable the radio completely, you cannot use wifi or bluetooth (both local, non-roaming) if you do so. There is no setting for "Never Roam" without losing functionality unrelated to roaming.
Very annoying indeed!
Your observation has some validity, but it completely ignores the effect of an actual useable web browser on this class of device. I'm one of the customers who got a huge bill (in terms of pages) from AT&T, and it wasn't because of pull email -- it was because I actually spent a lot of time using the web browser. My email wasn't even configured for the first couple of weeks, and thereafter it was only set to fetch manually. Moreover, I rarely checked it. the "DATA" entries on my bill, I can assure you, were all Safari hits. If other devices in this class had been offering as good a web experience, AT&T would have discovered the issue in their billing system long before the release of the iPhone.
The "cue the foo posts in 3, 2, 1..." posts will commence with no subsequent foo posts in 3, 2, 1...
- iPhone isn't the only phone to support traditional IMAP and POP3 using a polling or "pull" protocols to fetch the email. This is a useful feature. Some people want support for these because their email server (which they may not control) doesn't support a more modern mobile-friendly protocol like Push IMAP or Lemonade, yet. These people shouldn't be punished by a $4800 dollar phone bill. The rates are insane. The billing policies are screwed up. The phone software should warn you somehow. There are several contributing factors to this problem, but really, push vs. pull email isn't the biggest one.
- Also, iPhone supports a push email service, although it is only offered through Yahoo email at present, and is believed to be a proprietary protocol rather than the somewhat open P-IMAP or fully open Lemonade. (iPhone users should all start bugging Apple to expand their support for Lemonade and P-IMAP, both. It's curious that Apple's own
.Mac service doesn't even offer push email.)
- For users who get $4800 worth of email while roaming, push email won't solve this problem anyway. They'll just get billed for lots of emails pushed to their gadget when they come in, rather than pulled from the server by the gadget at regular polling intervals. Maybe the bill would be slightly reduced, but maybe not. Email trickles in all day long. Would he really have been that much happier with a $3000 phone bill? Or even a $1000 phone phone bill? I doubt it.
The really sad part is that a lot of that expensive email bill is probably for spam. I wonder if phone companies (who also happen to be major ISPs) are not very aggressive about stopping spam spewing botnets because they generate a revenue stream for the telco when we all have to pay to download spam (at least that remainder spam that leaks through several layers of filtering) to our mobile devices.If you mod me down, I shall become more powerful than you could possibly imagine.
It is not as easily filtered as you might think. Semiconductors have a tendency to rectify very high frequency signals, converting them into low frequency signals. Even discrete components can have problems, because you only need a tiny stray capacitance to get significant coupling at those frequencies. (Look at some numbers - a low stray capacitance is in the pF range, so what is 1/(2pi f C) for f of a few GHz?) It is easy to be stung by resonances unless you have a careful cascade of filters optimized for different frequency ranges.
It's the only possible scenario since when you actually power the phone off, it's completely off.
Unfortunately, that isn't true. Another possible scenario is that the users (if you follow the article links, quite a few people have now been had by this one) did something they thought would switch off their phones, but in fact didn't, and then they couldn't tell the difference. And as I've said throughout this discussion, the latter is a serious usability flaw, given the potential consequences of the mistake.
If you disagree, post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like.
...the result of the blackberry patent. I'll bet the iphone polls for email because pushing email would violate the blackberry patent.
Off may be really "Off", but if there's no way to tell if an iPhone is "Off" or "Sleeping" at first glance, then it's a UI design flaw.
There is, it's called pushing the Sleep/Wake button. Just like on my Sony Ericsson W810i, I have to push a key (any key) to see if it's on - when the display sleeps, its indistinguishable from being off. Of course, I know it's on, because I didn't turn it off! If this is a design flaw, practically every cell phone out there is flawed.
WOW! That's great iPhone!
I guess I'm an old coot, because I still remember fondly the days when saying that a device was "off" meant that it was not on.
Cut that out, or I will ship you to Norilsk in a box.
>I'd also like the ability to turn off the phone portion and leave the WiFi on.
me too, or an option to "limit data to WiFi only" That would be ideal for roaming situations since the default (and really only) behavior is that if an 802.11 connection is dropped it falls back to EDGE. That's great in an unlimited data area, it sucks when you are roaming
>
- MM
I've seen similar behavior with Nokia phones. You can disable MMS when roaming, and they have a security model in place for 3rd party apps.
When you install a new application(be it java or a native SIS application), an alert appears telling you all the device capabilites that this application will use. For Java (J2ME) apps, you can even set permissions on features-eg accessing the mobile network, sending SMS/MMS,accessing bluetooth, GPRS, your addressbook etc, and whether to prompt you each time it's used or deny usage.
In fact, some 3rd party applications also take care to warn the user about data usage charges if running in the background. I had Yahoo! Go on my phone; it would periodically sync mail and contacts from Yahoo, but you had to enable the option to run in the background; upon which it would display a message warning you that you could incur heavy bandwidth usage charges by doing so.
Such features will definitely help the user, at least they would have been warned of the consequences.
"..One hosts to look them up, one DNS to find them, and in the darkness BIND them."
The whole issue seems to be about the phone 'appearing' to be switched off while not actually being so. I think the simplest solution would be (for the next version of the iPhone of course) to have some kind of standby LED on the side (if it may not be possible to put it on the top surface) that blinks periodically to show that the phone is still active.(I've already mentioned this in another post here) It's already established that in standby mode it will connect to the network to sync mail or whatever, so atleast people will know that that's what's happening.
"..One hosts to look them up, one DNS to find them, and in the darkness BIND them."
Automatic email checking isn't the default on the iPhone. The user has to specifically enable it.
My poorly worded comment was centralized around the concept that you would not bring a phone and always leave it off. An iPhone is nothing without power.
Every experiment which ends in a big bang is a good experiment.
Soon as my girlfriend heard the price she removed my batteries.
I was definitely off.
The higher the technology, the sharper that two-edged sword.
Since the iPhone is a converged phone, media player, picture viewer, etc... I can easily
see many people wanting to use the gadget out of the US for the other purposes without
expecting to run up a huge data bill. Otherwise, why would the poster have taken their iPhones with them, but not using them...
This is a serious hole in the procedures that needs to be highlighted far and wide before AT&T and Apple unreasonably extract megabucks.
-- Gary Goldberg KA3ZYW 301/249-6501 AIM:OgGreeb Digital Marketing Inc., Bowie, MD
On my little Nokia (E61), there is an excellent feature that says do not autocheck mail when roaming. I then pick up the email via free WiFi whenever possible with a manual connect. It saves a fortune!!!! Oh and the E61 dors allow you to enable WiFi without turning GSM/GPRS/3G on. The thing is that whilst Apple has the edgge on sexy interfaces, Nokia has the edge on making mobile phones.
See my journal, I write things there
The answer is simple: Read the freakin' manual!
Karma Schmarma
Going from your Sony Ericsson to "practically every cell phone out there" is a pretty big leap. I've probably owned 5 or 6 cell phones in my life, not a large sample by anyone's comparison. But every one I've ever owned did have a visible indicator to differentiate between "Off" and "Sleep". As I've said before, I do believe that this is a MINOR UI flaw, one that won't keep me from buying an iPhones for my wife and I this Christmas. However, it is a flaw just the same, and it resulted in a $4500 dollar phone bill. That fact alone dictates that this flaw be taken seriously. I know that in my profession, if we cause a customer to spend $4500 dollars unnecessarily, we expect to hear from them rather quickly. And a bug fix will be assigned with the highest importance, and that is no exaggeration. In our bug reporting system, customer complaints are assigned the Highest Priority. This is standard operation in most companies I've worked for, and Apple and AT&T better damn well acknowledge it.
Mine doesn't.
I just leave it on a charger nearly all the time. I only take it with me when travelling.
I hate telephones, anyway. If the battery runs down, that's a plus as far as I'm concerned.
Charging insane rates for roaming is hardly something unique to American phone companies.
My phone company happily does the same (Vodafone).
I think its in the "How to be a Telecoms Carrier" manual, under "Profit, Sweet Profit".
yes they require you to hold it but at least the ones I have used light up when you press the power button and don't go dark until you have held it long enough to really turn them off. If the iphone goes dark on a quick press of the power button and I hadn't read the manual I would probablly assume it was off.
note: i'm known as plugwash most places but i screwd up registering that here somehow in the past and now can't register
My Treo's mail client has an almost identical feature, automatically shuts down when roaming to avoid excessive charges. Not exactly a new concept in email, or MMS, or anything else for that matter.
Give a man a fish, he'll eat for a day, but teach a man to phish...
There is only one way to switch off the phone, that method confirms that you have switched off the phone. The only other action they could have taken would have put the phone to sleep, and it would be the same method that they use every day to put the phone to sleep. Ask yourself if you would assume that the action you normaly take to do one thing, would do something completely different just because you were leaving the country?
T Money
World Domination with a plastic spoon since 1984
Just received my bill and I have a $93.42 charge for using 6,228 KB of ROAM GPRS for being in Toronto for a night.
The iPhone is cute and all, but isn't it about time we let the thing go? I mean, if it were any other phone (and this can happen with any smart phone), this wouldn't have even been reported anywhere. These days slashdot looks like somebody did 'grep iphone' on the entire internet.
Ever been to Europe (or done any travel at all)? Take your phone with you?
Why wouldn't you bring your cellphone with you on a trip?
Give a man a fish, he'll eat for a day, but teach a man to phish...
But the guy was on a cruise BOAT.
I think it was more likely the failboat.
Sendmail is like emacs: A nice operating system, but missing an editor and a MTA.
I've had an iPhone from the day after release. This story sounds like the customers are lying through their teeth. For one, automatic email check is off by default. The main point that I would like to make is that the automatic email check does NOT DOWNLOAD THE ENTIRE MAIL MESSAGE!
.mac and gmail on my iphone). There is NO WAY these guys could have racked up that amount of usage without actually going into the mail app and reading their mail. This smells like a fishy story to me. Sounds like they are trying to make excuses for actually reading their email overseas.
The iPhone simply checks the mail server and determines if there is new mail. I think it also downloads the email headers. But it does NOT download email attachments unless you actually open it! This goes for IMAP as well as POP (I have
If I'm wrong about this, please let me know... But that's what I have observed with my phone. Unless I actually open the Mail app on the bar, it does not attempt to download entire new messages.
However, I do think it is false advertising that "unlimited" internet access isn't really unlimited if you're not in an approved region. One thing that would be nice is if the iPhone gave a warning if you were roaming, or some kind of indicator to that effect.
If the iPhone were a CDMA device, it would be fair to say that there would be no story here, the user would not have run up any roaming bill at all from Europe.
-- Soruk
European Carriers warn you when changing networks through an SMS: "Welcome to A1 Austria,...blah blah"; Welcome to 02 network Germany....". So if he was warned, though the Iphone was on, and he didn't get the sms - it is Apples design fault; simple as that.
I take my children to see Madonna(..), but I never for once ever thought I was in the same business.Chris Rea.
Mine doesn't, but then my cellphone is ... a phone. Strange idea, I know. I hope nothing ever happens to my T28, because apparantly phones that are just phones aren't made any more.
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
I find it hard to believe that they didn't plug their phones into a charger during that week. Cruise ships generally are not that far from shore, and they spend a lot of their daylight hours in port, but still...I would have expected the batteries to run down during the course of the week since the phones were on.
again, i am saying again!: carriers warn you (in europe) when entering their network. if the guy did not receive a sms, the phone was off. if he received it and the phone was on standby and still not announced it, apple has an issue to resolve.
I take my children to see Madonna(..), but I never for once ever thought I was in the same business.Chris Rea.
I would love for you to be able to name five or six phones that had indicator lights. My RAZR, my Ericsson, and whatever Motorola flip-phone I had before that, along with a few different ultra-cheap Virgin Mobile handsets, AND a cheap Nokia I bought abroad a few years ago to use in the UK - none of them have had an indicator.
I'm sure perhaps you may have had a phone once that had such an indicator but I have a hard time believing it's been five or six.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
You really have to question the usability of the device if a user needs to read the manual to learn how to turn the phone off.
// The fastest Alt-Tab in the West
"When you shut your phone, does it turn off?"
Er... Yes, actually. And so it has been with every mobile I've ever owned.
Name one. For you see, I've owned a number of different cheap Virgin Mobile handsets, including a flip phone. And a RAZR, and an Ericsson, and some Motorola flip phone, and a Nokia. None of them operate as you describe, they require fairly long button presses to turn off and the simple act of ceasing to use them or shutting a clamshell has not ever turned them off (well, eventually loss of power will turn them off).
What I suspect here is you made the same mistake the guy in the article did, you thought your phone was off when it wasn't. Didn't you wonder why your batteries kept running down with the phone "off'?
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Yes, it does require a button to be held.
In other words, just like the iPhone. Case closed.
As I said, the iPhone works like every other phone. Standby is not off. Everyone knows this, at least anyone who has used a cell phone - even one like yours.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
AT&T has a number you can call to disable EDGE use (for any phone). That way you can still use it for calls, or browse on WiFi and not have to worry about incurring EDGE fees.
Sorry, don't know it offhand.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
See, this is why you NEVER call those phone numbers in the Caribbean.
Your local exchange carrier (LEC) can cap your bill once it reaches a certain amount, at which point they'll try to contact you. If they can't contact you, they'll shut off your service, except for 911 and operator calls. This is how things work within the continental US and MOST of it's territories.
But once you leave the US and enter the the territory of another country's LEC, you're now subject to THEIR pricing structure. By making the call to that area, you are voluntarily connecting to and agreeing to their rules and regulations, and your LEC no longer has any say in the matter.
If those R&R's say that connections to a certain number cost $95.00 a minute, then you are S.O.L. That company is going to submit your bill to your LEC, and you will have to pay it.
It's even worse for cellphones. Connecting to the local network means you agree to their R&R's, and that includes their pricing. A regular phone call might not cost you too much? Maybe $2.99 a minute. But data calls are going to rape you sideways with a spiked 2x4, depending on your carrier and connection method.
Bottom line? This person is S.O.L.
[End Of Line]
Nokia 5300. There, now you know one.
When my phone is in standby mode, it displays the date, time and a status icon, with no backlight. And it's got an "Off" button. When I press that, it turns the phone off.
Maybe the iPhone needs a flashing message on the screen that says "YOUR iPHONE IS OFF. PRESS # TO TURN ON YOUR iPHONE."
If they flew overseas, they would have needed to turn on "Airplane mode," which turns off the cell radio, Bluetooth, and WiFi. When they were on their cruise, they would have had to manually turn Airplane Mode off--purposely re enabling their radios--in order to rack up a phone bill. If they thought their phones were off, why would they do this? Were they browsing the web while on WiFi?
They would also have to purposely charge the iPhone every day or two or their batteries would die.
They would also have to manually click on email attachments to download them. The iPhone does not poll for emails and download the entire content if there is a large message, nor does it automatically download attachments.
So they turned the radios on, constantly charging up their phones, and somehow remained oblivious that they were manually downloading huge emails for a week long period, and then surprised that they had an international phone bill?
-
How Microsoft Got Its Office Monopoly
Microsoft's Office monopoly gives the company more revenues and delivers nearly as much profit as its Windows software. How did it gain such a powerful position in productivity applications? The history of Office is rooted in decisions Apple made in the 80s with the Lisa and Macintosh, and also has an interesting correlation to Apple's iPhone strategy today.
I have a motorola (i60 or t60, can't remember). Off means "no power". It has an actual power button to accomplish this. Just like every other mobile/cell phone I've ever owned. Off means "off/no-power", and "on" means able to make or receive calls. Note: the power button is NOT the same as the "end call" button.
How does it receive calls? If I turn it on, but don't make an outgoing call, then it can receive calls. Just like every other cell phone on the planet. If I want to receive calls, it has to be turned on.
You seem to be confused between "on but able to receive a call" and "off". It's like you don't know the difference between "closing a clamshell phone" and "hitting the power button". That or you don't understand the difference between the "end call" operation and the "turn off the power" operation. Any phone which doesn't make a clear distinction between the two modes needs to be recalled.
Stories like this come about because the mode you get if you press "sleep/wake" isn't a sleep mode at all, but a lock mode. The iPhone manual actually states that you use the sleep/wake button to lock the phone, which shows you how badly that button was named - at no point in the manual does it actually talk about putting the device to sleep. Here's what the manual says about this feature, p.14:
Talk about counter-intuitive!
It has been known that the iPhone has a removable SIM since 12 minutes after it was announced. Don't believe me? Go watch the keynote and stop spreading FUD.
I may be confused, but I think the poster was referring to closing a flip phone when he said "shut your phone." This does not normally turn the phone off--normally it puts it into some sort of sleep/suspend mode from which it can still make data transactions and receive calls.
Don't you think that the iPhone with it's unlimited data plan should at least WARN the user that they will incur data charges if they are roaming and offer to turn off the data transmission feature? Why would any reasonable person expect to receive bills for thousands of dollars for simply posessing an iPhone in the wrong place? What other electronic devices incur huge fees for simply being moved from one place to another? Are iPhone users warned to leave their iPhones at home if they trave abroad? Both Apple and AT&T are equally negligent here. They need to do an emergency software update to avoid this issue in the future via sensible defaults (not transmitting data when it costs extra fees) and warnings (Data transmission in this location costs $25 are you sure you want to continue?) There is no question that subscribers being hit by unexpected data fees should refuse to pay and take AT&T and/or Apple to small claims court.
Unless it were a WCDMA device. (Whose bright idea was it to use "TDMA" to mean both "Time Division Multiple Access" and "IS-54 and IS-136", and to use "CDMA" to mean both "Code Division Multiple Access" and "IS-95 and CDMA2000"?)
"Standby" is not the same as "Off", and clearly the person in question who is claiming that "off isn't off" doesn't know the difference. His ignorance is a failing on his part, not on the part of the people trying to talk to him.
Further, any phone which makes it difficult to distinguish between "standby" and "off" (or, worse, makes it difficult to select between them) has a defective user interface design.
Ask yourself if you would assume that the action you normaly take to do one thing, would do something completely different just because you were leaving the country?
I assume that's what the poor fellow we're talking about here has been asking himself, since he got landed with a bill for $4,800 for something that would have been free at home.
If you disagree, post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like.
He knew he was going to a different country, and knew he was going to be roaming (he had to turn on international roaming with ATT for his phone to work in the first place). He also should have known that his phone uses the cell connection when it doesn't have a wi-fi connection to check email (which he set his phone to do). The question is, at any point during this, would a reasonable person expect that cell use overseas using an international roaming feature be free? I'm thinking no.
T Money
World Domination with a plastic spoon since 1984
Yes, I think that's the point that is being made in this side-thread: The person who said it's like every other phone doesn't know the difference between "standby" and "off". This ignorance on their part undermines the assertion that they were trying to make.
To limit power consumption. Phones are supposed to last at least 24 hours if not days when you're not talking on them.
In Repressive Burma, it's not just your connection that dies. slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=314547&cid=20819199
I used to have a Samsung A-series flip phone like Anonymous Brave Guy, and it actually doesn't. Of course, it has a one-line monochrome LCD front display that probably doesn't consume much power (the main display, of course, powers down when the phone is closed and powers up when you open it again). I can't remember what the old LED-display phones did, but they were still in use well into the 90's.
In Repressive Burma, it's not just your connection that dies. slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=314547&cid=20819199
So I wonder how the the FAA feels about this? After all such wireless and electronic devices affect the navigation and guidance systems in planes.
Hmmm, so no sudden influx of plane crashes. Those lying B@s7@rds!!!!!
CheersXyst
ps: yes I do know it's all a load of hooey that electronic devices must be turned off.
This was AT&T wireless.
From what I understand though, it has everything to do with the European carriers charging outrageous roaming rates.
The other thing I read is that if you don't answer a call and let it ring through to voicemail, you actually get nailed for double the airtime charge, as it becomes two calls. The first call is from the caller to whichever switch you're roaming on. The second call is set up from the serving switch, all the way back to your home voicemail platform. Can somebody confirm if this is true? It sounds like quite a ripoff! And quite a neat way to run up somebody else's cell phone bill...
What i haven't seen a comment on, though I didn't look super closely, is that the visual voice mail feature downloads your voice messages as audio files to the phone. Over the weeks these three were gone it could have downloaded a lot of messages. As near as I can tell you can't turn this off unless you goto airplane mode or completely switch off the device. I guess you would need a dataplan anywhere for the iPhone even if you just wanted to use it for voice.
Moderator Dude. Like, this was so totally funny. Haven't you ever watched The Colbert Report? Who hates America more, you or the asshat who trolls about the iPhone killing people because it's a cell phone? Cell phones don't kill people. Morons kill people.
If you mod me down, I shall become more powerful than you could possibly imagine.
First off, I don't really have a whole lot of sympathy for someone who buys an advanced gadget like the iPhone and cannot tell the difference between "off" and "sleep", nor can I feel bad for someone who apparently travels internationally, but does ZERO advanced inquiry into international phone/data costs.
But, worst of all is The Inquirer's terrible story and complete lack of investigation.
I am taking a trip to Norway next month and did some preliminary research already into my options for iPhone coverage while I'm abroad. I heard about AT&T's $24.95/mo plan that allows for 20 MB of D/L in a month, so I called AT&T to find out more. It turns out that AT&T does not include Norway in this plan, but even worse, the plan REQUIRES a 1-year contract, so it is useless to the occasional traveler (or vacationer). Did The Inquirer discover this? Hell no. They were just looking to publish something incendiary. They could have been even more effective had they done minimal research into their story.
All that aside, the person who got the ridiculous phone bill had several options:
* Put the iPhone into Airplane Mode, to prevent it from being on any network. (The drawback is that WiFi doesn't work then.)
* Call AT&T and block data access while abroad. Then call again upon return, to get it re-enabled. (I learned about this option when I called for info on the $24.95/mo plan.)
* Turn off automatic email checking. (But the iPhone could accidentally still utilize roaming data networks and rack up a several-hundred-dollar bill.)
* Pull the SIM card and be done with it. If you pull the SIM card, the phone cannot communicate with any cell phone network, but will still work just fine on WiFi. And you can put the SIM back in to make calls, if you so choose to pay the bills.
There are many ways to avoid being shocked. But one has to actually consider the fact that they are *leaving* their native area. Be aware of your world, people.
Jory
Ooops... I meant to be a smart alec, but also to be informative... then I hit "submit" instead of "preview" before I was finished. Here's are two interesting articles, submitted for serious consideration on the (off topic) question that you raised.
Paul Krugman: Death by Insurance
Million-Dollar Murray
Mr. Krugman is an economist and writes regularly and eloquently about health care issues. You may or may not agree with his policy recommendations, but his analysis of the issues with our current system is always interesting. Health care is more expensive than it probably should be for a few reasons. One is that our system in the United States is based on the concept of health insurance. This drives up costs in several ways, some of which are explored by the two articles above.
If you mod me down, I shall become more powerful than you could possibly imagine.
10 page "Important Product information Guide included with each iPhone. That and an 8 page illustrated manual. Page one of the "Important" guide tells you how to turn the phone off...
The problem is no one reads manuals anymore, everyone wants to sue and complain, everytime someone effs up, it is someone else's fault. You just spent $600 on a new toy (now $400) - you would think you would read the 10 pages of "Important Information" before you start using it 24/7....
Hopefully "after this gets publicised" more people will bother to read the manual which clearly states in Chapter 2 "The Basics" (page 14) how to turn the iPod completely off.
Excuse me, but I thought Apple products were so well designed that people didn't need manuals and 54 page instruction booklets. So which is it Apple fanboys...intuitive, or complex and obscure? You really can't have it both ways.
And let me just say that a phone that actively and invisibly racks up charges while it is turned OFF is fucking horrible design. It goes against accepted Human Interface Theory where Off is supposed to be off. No way are these excessive data charges the fault of the users.
As for Apple's AT&T partner, leave it up to the phone company to figure out a way to charge their customers for free WiFi.
Phones are supposed to last at least 24 hours if not days when you're not talking on them.
And mine does, despite having only on and off modes.
Now, I appreciate that in trendy hi-tech land, my phone is prehistoric. Newer phones have larger, full-colour displays, and may require the whole screen to be off to conserve power. But if this is the case, was it really so difficult to have some other indicator (such as the little LEDs everyone used to use) to show that the device was still on and just in stand-by mode when the screen is off? This is, after all, what pretty much every other piece of consumer electronics does when in stand-by.
If you disagree, post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like.
This fucktard had automatic email checking on. If he actually learned how to use his phone, he would have turned on Airplane mode. What a retard.
Muahahahahaha!
I find laziness to be an excellent motivator.
Why does the cost of using a phone seem to increase exponentially with distance?
This is a non-article, and should not even be here.
If the phones were truly off or in flight mode, both which are asy to do, they would not have had a problem.
But these people were just lazy and too used to the practically free internet in the US.
I say, burn them! lol.
That's my story and I'm sticking to it...
Damn, so potentially if I leave my iPod ON, i could get a huge bill from AT&T even though I'm in Aus? Shit. Thats scary. I bet ya it does it through iTunes!