However, I think people here with smartphones are very commonly paying $90-100 a month for the total phone bill.
This is partly why I am downgrading to a dumbphone when the one I've ordered arrives. Just not worth the extra $40 or so a month after the taxes are added in.
For what it's worth, you can buy unlocked phones and activate them on more than one American carrier. I don't know if Sprint or Verizon let you do this, but I doubt they'd turn down business if you walked in and said "I have my own phone, how can I start paying you a monthly fee?"
I have a voice plan for $39.99, unlimited data for $30.00, and 1500 text messages for $15.00. My bill is $90-95 a month. However, I am grandfathered into these plans. New customers aren't so lucky.
Quality of mobile coverage is dependent on a myriad of factors, including your geographic area and the handset you are using. Some carriers suck in some areas and are great in others.
You sign the customers first, work out the details later. Customers are committed for 2 years, will likely be on for 4 or 6. They'll be stuck with you.
I think CoD is the exception in that they haven't run that franchise into the ground. They keep making compelling games.
What I hate - and this is not limited to Craptivision or to COD - is that everyone wants to make a game into a community right now. The game has to be online-focused, you end up level-grinding just to use better than garbage starting weapons (MW2)...
You know, this is a 1st person shooter. Strip away all the graphics and weapons, and I'm playing Doom again because the basic concept is fun. I don't want to be forced into an online experience with the difficulty set at insane (with human opponents), playing the same 10 maps over and over. I want a story. I want a campaign, character development, storytelling. I want to do story-based missions and otherwise play a console game.
It's such a shame to waste a good game on deathmatches. We could tell a compelling human drama about war, but instead, you get a campaign you finish in 3 hours and then you end up playing capture the flag for a week before you're bored again.
It's not enough to say "Well, you agreed to the TOS" when you know full well nobody reads it. If you are tracking my physical movements, I should have to opt-in to that in an obvious way.
It doesn't even clearly state that this stops if you turn off Location Services, or what happens to the backed up files if you do.
The point is not what it's currently doing, the point is (a) what COULD be done (by Apple, a malevolent third party, whomever) simply because this information exists when it should not and (b) whether this level of personal tracking information should be stored in the first place without it being clear to the user.
>I've no doubt that there will be strong competitors to the iPad, but the supposed "cheaper, better, faster" Android tablet that was meant to appear months ago still hasn't arrived.
These same "Wait till next year" noises have been coming from the Android camp since the iPad was first unveiled.
The Xoom might be the first credible iPad competitor looking at the device itself, but how many products ever come in ABOVE apple on price and succeed? The average consumer will consider Android when it's functionally equivalent and cheaper. People see the price tag on the Xoom and say "Well I could just get an iPad for that much."
I've been using the iPhone 4 since it came out, and I'm re-prioritizing along these lines.
With inflation being what it is (for everything except salaries and the dollar), I am switching to a dumbphone with a full keyboard for messaging. $30-40 off my monthly phone bill will be nice, flipping the phone for most of what I paid for it will be nicer.
I don't think it's a cache file which is not garbage collected. But the title IS bad because it's not being transmitted to Apple. It's just being logged on your device where other apps can use it. (as if that's much better...)
I wouldn't call Windows Phone 7 "innovation". It's a low-rent copy of the Apple model that also tries to leverage Office lock-in to push into the business space.
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Supposedly, for an English speaker Finnish is one of the world's most difficult languages to acquire.
If you were really that worried, you could turn the phone off and/or take the battery out until you were ready to phone home.
I don't understand the 0.66€ part.
However, I think people here with smartphones are very commonly paying $90-100 a month for the total phone bill.
This is partly why I am downgrading to a dumbphone when the one I've ordered arrives. Just not worth the extra $40 or so a month after the taxes are added in.
I'm in the Twin Cities and all phone providers seem equal for calling (same as in other metro areas where I've lived).
AT&T can be pretty spotty for data here, especially 3G.
For what it's worth, you can buy unlocked phones and activate them on more than one American carrier. I don't know if Sprint or Verizon let you do this, but I doubt they'd turn down business if you walked in and said "I have my own phone, how can I start paying you a monthly fee?"
Whoring for your own blog, I see?
Some blogger told us yesterday there was no reason to panic, and this data was perfectly safe.
I have a voice plan for $39.99, unlimited data for $30.00, and 1500 text messages for $15.00. My bill is $90-95 a month. However, I am grandfathered into these plans. New customers aren't so lucky.
Quality of mobile coverage is dependent on a myriad of factors, including your geographic area and the handset you are using. Some carriers suck in some areas and are great in others.
You sign the customers first, work out the details later. Customers are committed for 2 years, will likely be on for 4 or 6. They'll be stuck with you.
I think CoD is the exception in that they haven't run that franchise into the ground. They keep making compelling games.
What I hate - and this is not limited to Craptivision or to COD - is that everyone wants to make a game into a community right now. The game has to be online-focused, you end up level-grinding just to use better than garbage starting weapons (MW2)...
You know, this is a 1st person shooter. Strip away all the graphics and weapons, and I'm playing Doom again because the basic concept is fun. I don't want to be forced into an online experience with the difficulty set at insane (with human opponents), playing the same 10 maps over and over. I want a story. I want a campaign, character development, storytelling. I want to do story-based missions and otherwise play a console game.
It's such a shame to waste a good game on deathmatches. We could tell a compelling human drama about war, but instead, you get a campaign you finish in 3 hours and then you end up playing capture the flag for a week before you're bored again.
Both for email and music, it sucks rocks compared to the iPhone.
I'm not an Apple apologist, but the iPhone is much better for music and everyone but RIM devotees can see that
It's synced to your PC, which is a vulnerability in itself.
And how do you know that your dumbphone doesn't cache any location data in a retrievable format?
Agreed.
It's not enough to say "Well, you agreed to the TOS" when you know full well nobody reads it. If you are tracking my physical movements, I should have to opt-in to that in an obvious way.
It doesn't even clearly state that this stops if you turn off Location Services, or what happens to the backed up files if you do.
The point is not what it's currently doing, the point is (a) what COULD be done (by Apple, a malevolent third party, whomever) simply because this information exists when it should not and (b) whether this level of personal tracking information should be stored in the first place without it being clear to the user.
>I've no doubt that there will be strong competitors to the iPad, but the supposed "cheaper, better, faster" Android tablet that was meant to appear months ago still hasn't arrived.
These same "Wait till next year" noises have been coming from the Android camp since the iPad was first unveiled.
The Xoom might be the first credible iPad competitor looking at the device itself, but how many products ever come in ABOVE apple on price and succeed? The average consumer will consider Android when it's functionally equivalent and cheaper. People see the price tag on the Xoom and say "Well I could just get an iPad for that much."
I've been using the iPhone 4 since it came out, and I'm re-prioritizing along these lines.
With inflation being what it is (for everything except salaries and the dollar), I am switching to a dumbphone with a full keyboard for messaging. $30-40 off my monthly phone bill will be nice, flipping the phone for most of what I paid for it will be nicer.
TFS and TFA are speculative and needlessly inflammatory.
Welcome to Slashdot.
I was trying to be funny, not trolling.
You only have a second to think of something if you still want firsties.
Depending on the country, your privacy probably suffered equally egregious breaches years ago.
That makes me feel better since the government never suffers from scope creep.
I don't think it's a cache file which is not garbage collected. But the title IS bad because it's not being transmitted to Apple. It's just being logged on your device where other apps can use it. (as if that's much better...)
I wouldn't call Windows Phone 7 "innovation". It's a low-rent copy of the Apple model that also tries to leverage Office lock-in to push into the business space.
Not "obsolete in three weeks", but perhaps "$100 less two months from now"