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AT&T To Offer No-Contract iPhone
rfc1394 writes "While the regular price of an iPhone is $199 if you take a 2-year contract with AT&T, if you're willing to pay a lot more you can get one without a contract. An article in InfoWorld mentions that 'Freedom will come with a price — $599 for an 8GB device and $699 for a 16GB — but this will mark the first time consumers in the United States are able to buy an iPhone without being tied down to a two-year contract. The phone probably would still be locked for use only on AT&T's network, said Jupiter Research analyst Michael Gartenberg. But buyers could choose a pay-as-you-go plan for voice service.' The question still remains, does it make any sense to pay that much for a phone that is still locked to AT&T's network even if you aren't bound to a contract?" Update: 07/05 18:21 GMT by T : An anonymous reader suggests that there is a convoluted but possibly cheaper route to an new, unlocked iPhone.
So I buy a phone outright for $599/$699, or I buy a phone for $199/$299 with a 2 year plan ($36 activation fee) then cancel the contract immediately for $175...net cost $410/$510. Hmmmm.....
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Fail
Most phone companies have a stipulation in the contract that forces you to return the phone if you cancel the contract soon after starting it. In this case I would think that time would be about 6 months or so - enough time for them to squeeze out the 600/700 dollar cost.
"does it make any sense to pay that much for a phone that is still locked to AT&T's network even if you aren't bound to a contract?"
As Henry Ford once said of his Model T, "the customer can have any color he wants, so long as it's black." But only a cellphone company could call that a "custom color choice" and charge extra for it.
Maybe but in the case of AT&T they do not:
Cancellations/Early Termination Fee: An Early Termination Fee of $175 may be assessed against you in the event that you terminate your Wireless Service Agreement and/or selected plan before the expiration of its term. For Service activated on or after May 25, 2008, the Early Termination Fee will be reduced by $5.00 for each full month toward your minimum term that you complete. You may cancel your service, for any reason and without incurring the Early Termination Fee, within thirty (30) days of signing your Wireless Service Agreement, PROVIDED, however, that if you cancel service you will remain responsible for any service fees and charges incurred. If you cancel within three (3) days of signing your Wireless Service Agreement, you will be entitled to a refund of your activation fee, if any. If you exercise this option, you may be required to return devices and associated accessories purchased in connection with your Wireless Service Agreement.
So you wait until the 4th day.
The NSA: The only part of the US government that actually listens.
You would need to pay for 1 month of your contract ($70 is the cheapest?), if you cancel before 30 days you have to return the phone. Also, there has been no confirmation of the early termination fee being $175 for the iPhone. (if it were to be $175 you would still end up getting the phone a bit cheaper than going with the no commitment option).
Just FYI... the new data plan with AT&T is $30/month while the old plan (Edge) was only $20/month
SO with the new phone you're already paying $120/year more than previous... which means people are actually paying more money over the 2 year period... $199 + $240 (2 year contract) = $459
A fool throws a stone into a well and a thousand sages can not remove it.
Because the software is shit? No one can even make the example videos of it look like its decent. I expect my phone not to lag, have you seen OpenMoko in use? Its a joke.
I know I'm going to be modded as a flame, but seriously, no one who wants a phone to USE will want OpenMoko. It looks cool as hell from a developer/hacker point of view, one of the guys I work with ( who loves his windows mobile phone, heh ) intends to order one to play with, but he just replaced his old phone with another Windows Mobile phone so he had one that actually worked along side the OM phone he hacks around on.
But ... no one who just wants a usable phone wants to deal with an OS thats ... pre-alpha at the very best, and will come with absolutely 0 support from your carrier.
The people who will buy an OpenMoko device are developers, not users. The people who buy an iPhone are users who don't want to be developers to know how to use their phone. They just want a phone thats intuitive and works.
These two devices do not in any way target the same market at this point in time.
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Are the hardware specifications of a cell phone the only relevant thing? Absolutely not. Hardware defines the device's potential, but the device's quality is determined in a large part by its software. And Openmoko Freerunner's software stack is pretty sucky right now.
Right now Freerunner's battery life is something like 5 hours, and there are many other issues.
A great example of why all but a handful of people may prefer an iPhone to a Freerunner is this month's discussion of filesystem images on the mailing list. Apparently there's an FSO image ("make and receive calls. That's about it."), an ASU image ("qtopia apps don't start if I have the SIM in the phone"), a GTK image ("more or less what the phone came preloaded with"), a ScaredyCat image ("mostly works"). This should make it pretty clear that a Freerunner is not a consumer-ready device and is definitely NOT an iPhone equivalent.
A Freerunner should only be purchased by those who are fully prepared to deal with it as a hobby rather than as a consumer-ready phone/PDA. Posts like yours are misleading and do a disservice both to the consumer and to the Openmoko project.
Here in the States, you are always locked into a provider, even if the phone is popular enough to be sold be more by than one provider.
No, you can buy a phone directly from a manufacturer without it being locked to a carrier. I purchased my unlocked Z6 from the on-line Motorola store. Of course nobody subsidized me for $175, either, so I paid full price for it. But I now have a phone that I can actually use if I travel abroad and buy a local SIM.
John
This is getting better and better...
They have a special iPhone section ((4) iPHONE TERMS AND CONDITIONS): Terms Applicable to AT&T Nation/FamilyTalk® GSM Plans: Credit approval required. Subscriber must live and have a mailing address within AT&T's owned network coverage area. An early termination fee applies if service is terminated before the end of the contract term. The fee will begin at $175 per device and decrease by $5 each month for the term of the agreement. If phone is returned within 3 days, activation fee will be refunded. If phone is returned within 14 days in like-new condition with all components, early termination fee will be waived. Service may be cancelled after 14 days but within 30 days and early termination fee will be waived, but equipment may not be returned. All other charges apply. Some dealers impose additional fees.
So they explicitly say that you can cancel the service between 14 and 30 days, avoid the early termination fee, but don't have to return the iPhone. As an aside, this section also implies that the "you may be required to return devices" in the other part of the contract indeed only applies to the first 30 day period, but the explicit iPhone section makes the various interpretations of the other section mute for this question.
So, we can buy the iPhone outright for $599/$699 or we can get a contract and cancel it after 14 days (but before 30 days) and pay a net of $235/$335. As my son would say Sweeeet.
The NSA: The only part of the US government that actually listens.
The iPhone is certainly not a general computing device. I love my iPhone, and I actually enjoy the iPhone SDK, but ... it will never replace my laptop when I want to get something done.
Typing on any phone sucks. Some suck less, but they all suck, even the ones with the keyboards that cover the full size of the phone ( HTC Tilt as an example ).
The iPhone does some tasks great. Its a good 'phone' imo. Its obviously a great iPod, some would argue that there are better portable audio players, but I've never used a non-iPod player so my opinion is obviously biased. Its not as good as my old Palm V or Windows Mobile devices for taking notes or managing tasks by a long shot, but it does the job well enough.
With the SDK release, it'll have a few cool/good apps for it come out soon, but its not a PC and never will be.
As far as Palm being great because of open development, this is a double edge sword. Do you know how many absolutely crappy palm apps exist? I'd guess about 10 crappy apps exist for every half way decent app. The advantage to making it 'harder' to developer for the iPhone is that in itself will weed out many of the crappy apps written by people who wont put much effort into it.
With Job's evil grip over apps with the AppStore and digital sigs, some types of malicious apps can be stopped as well.
The only apps that may not be released on the iPhone are ones with a GPLv3 or like license due to the retarded restrictions in it that are supposed to help support my 'freedom' to do what I want with the software, but ARE restrictions to what I can do with it. Any GPLv2 or BSD or (insert any of the thousand other sane distribution licenses here) will be available, if not by the original authors, by someone else who is part of the SDK program, someone will probably make a service for OSS developers who don't have the money to blow on the iphone dev program.
Even GPLv3 apps aren't ruled out. The original authors can do whatever they want with the software, they are not under the restrictions of the distribution license so they CAN release an iPhone version should they choose to, OR, they can grant someone else the right to do so.
BUT ... in all of these, 99% of the apps out there, don't belong on the iPhone. Its a phone/entertainment device, with some basic computing abilities, nothing more.
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Big "days" in history:
Great moments in time. Well, if you believe the Apple faithful, anyway.