Is anyone going to trade up to the iPhone 3GS?

well i guess it is need and convenience. i had a PDA, guess i am too old because browsing on it was too much work. screen was too small. gave it to my SO, she much younger, better vision, etc. she loves it. $30 data plan from verizon. i have "regular" what they call advanced device phone. i do premium plan which is $20 discounted for employee discount program verizon has so it costs me essentially $16 extra on my plan. i get unlimited, video, internet, email and navigator for it. since its not a PDA, cant install 3rd party apps, but it does have a document viewer, html browser, etc. so not a lot of drawback to what i have verses a reg PDA.

now is it worth the money?? sure if you use it all. now that i have Pri with Nav, dont use that so much (although it is interesting to see the differences in route selection, etc). the email i use occasionally. i have posted from PC from my previous phone which basically can do the same thing but its a hassle. i check my email only when i need to . for example, i checked it from work to get my tracking # so i could pick up phone from Fedex since i never home to accept delivery and they dont drop off phones. that kind of stuff... so for light duty, it works.

the video i use daily. i have a 2 year old...one with no patience, extreme demands, etc. couple that with the fact that i "want" to be a news junkie. so even if home when the news is on, i tend to miss a lot of it. since we dumped cable (was relying on it way too much for babysitting needs) DVR'ing the news to watch after Ry goes to bed aint there either. for some reason, the upstairs TV still gets a signal but is all digital channels, iow, we have 4-1, 4-2, etc... so the conversion from cable company seems to be the only thing disabled...

anyway, part of the video package is a rebroadcast of the national news from like 10 different sources. so i tend to watch those. (not all ten, usually only 2 with the 3 majors first, then CNBC, FOX in order. rarely get beyond that) and its nice because its commercial free. listed ( at least in NBC and CBS) as segments so dont have to watch what i dont want to see... ABC does a rebroadcast of the entire show, but they do have news segments as well.

now, granted, all this requires that i have good cell service and i am sure that living in a state capital helps. i have a good enough signal that i dumped my home phone about 5 years ago. (something i really could not do with Sprint or ATT...but that was a long time ago. i am sure they are better now...just unwilling to find out is all)

 

We dropped our landline in 2001 and went cell phone only. However, the state of Alabama requires a landline in order to get a business license. The most basic landline is $25 once taxes are figured in. So we went from $75 a month for just the cell phones to $100 once the landline was added. I figured we might as well use the landline since I was paying a crazy amount to have it just sitting there.

Tracfone doesn't own any network infrastructure, they simply purchase access to AT&T and Verizon's networks and resell it for 1/2 the price that AT&T charges their customers. So far reception and call quality has been excellent, no different than Verizon or AT&T contract plans I've had. I also like the fact that the phones are cheap. My W175 was $10 and my wife's W376 was $25. That is much less than the $125 Verizon charged us for their least expensive phone when my wife's phone got dropped in the bathtub. So I am a very happy pre-paid customer and I don't see myself going back to anything that requires a contract.

I wouldn't mind paying AT&T $30 a month for their unlimited data plan if it was really unlimited. If I could tether a Blackberry or iPhone I would gladly pay $30, maybe even $40. However, if you want to tether it is $60 a month for only 5GB. That is not much data if you are tethering. I can't see paying AT&T $30 for data on my cellphone when I pay $25 a month for a cable modem that connects at 5Mbps.

 

glas it works for you and if i thought it would work for me, i would do it in a heartbeat. i have 8 lines on my account and pay over $300 a month... would gladly dump it all if i thought i could be happy with less, but too many needs, too many features, too much convenience... all in all, it really is worth the money...

as far as your situation, that is the big issue that i used to have with both verizon and ATT, lets face it, they control 90% of the market so their prices are essentially identical, but their cheapest plans are not cheap enough for a modest user. so sure they have great networks because they spend the money to maintain them but they penalize low users by starting plans at a price point that is too high. if they lowered it, both would gain nearly the entire pre-paid market.

my plan has value because my plan includes 4 different households in 3 different states. the bigger the family share plan the better the value. for 2 people, $70 for the minimum is too much. add a few perks, and its more than $60 per line after taxes. on one plan we have 5 lines, get unlimited txt, pic messaging and it cost $30. now that is true whether it be 5 phones or 2 phones... well at $15 per line, it aint worth it. but at $6 per line, its a great deal especially if you have people on your account that do 10, 000 texts a month.

 

It does sound pretty cool. But I still think it's not for me. When I travel I'm likely to be at a wilderness lodge or on a boat. Not a lot of use for a restaurant-locator. When I hike, I'm with a guide who knows the trails and carries a map and compass. (I've yet to meet a certified hiking guide who considers a GPS an acceptable substitute for a map and compass.)

And the biggest reason of all: I don't like AT&T.

I've seen the iPhone do some cool things, like run Google Earth with your present position as determined by GPS. But for $1,000 a year, I don't need it.

 

I did! Sold my 3g on ebay for $300 (waited too long, could have gotten 400 a week prior), then bought a 32gb black 3gs. Didn't cost much. Upgraded my wife from an LG Vu to the 16gb 3gs as well. The speed alone is worth the upgrade IMHO. No lag, everything's as it should have been 2 years ago! I loved it before, now I REALLY REALLY love my iPhone!

Zhe Wiz

 

I just upgraded from my LG CU500v and can't stop playing with it. Except for trouble with my integrated voice mail account, my new iPhone has been a pleasure. I wish they didn't make it so costly, though.

 

I'll wait a while. The price will drop (recall the 3G price drop that had everyone hopping mad?) and there will probably be an update or two while kinks are worked out. The compass tie in to Google maps so you know what direction you're facing looks great. The video also looks neat. Voice dialing will be very convenient. So convenience and coolness upgrades, but nothing amazing, particularly since the 3.0 software update will give us 3G folks cut/copy/paste and MMS. I'd like to play with the phone in store to see if the responsiveness is dramatically improved like the commercial claims. Finally, I just finished year one of 2 with my 3G contract. I might as well just wait the year - there will likely be another upgrade then!

 

How does that work?

I have an altimeter with an electronic compass built in. I would love to know how it operates. It requires me to "calibrate" it by pressing certain buttons and then rotating the entire unit slowly twice around. The first time I did that, it pointed exactly opposite! The second time, it worked, more or less, but I don't trust it at all. (It does not have GPS in it.)

My GPS knows which way I'm facing if I move far enough, because it knows the relative positions of point A and point B.

Does the iPhone use an electronic compass, or does it just use your movement to determine direction of motion? And if it uses a compass, does it have to be "calibrated" and does it appear to be accurate?

This is one of those gadgets that I think is really cool, but I just have no real use for it, and at $1,000 per year, though I could afford it, I cannot justify it.

 

I can't say how it works, but I know you don't have to move at all for the compass to know which way is north. It sometimes says it is experiencing interference, in which case all you do is wave it around to get it to reset itself. In the maps feature, there is a button to press to tell it to locate your current position on the map. If you then hit the button again, it will show a little searchlight area attached to the pinhead location, to show you which way the phone is facing in relation to the map.

 

I pay $25/month, and I have Verizon, which I am very satisfied with. So with an iPhone I'd pay for the phone, plus $700 per year more than now, and I'd be with a company that, in my experience, has unconscionable customer relations policies, such as continuing to bill my mother for landline long-distance service for months and months after she told them she wanted to cancel it. They argued with her, would not accept her request to cancel, and continued to bill her. No way would I switch from Verizon to AT&T!!!

 

Give a man a loaf of bread and make him full.
But teach a man to grow wheat, use fertilizer and other chemicals and make his own bread and give himself cancer!

Besides the monthly charges are way too high!!! Drop it 40%, I would switch over!

The ATT MONOPOLY on the Iphone is bullshit also!!!

 

I'll do you one better: Drop the price 50%, and switch it to Verizon, and give me the phone free under the "new every two" plan which I've been eligible for for the past two years, and I'll think about it.

 

I traded up from my 1st Gen and it's a solid improvement: it's faster (CPU-wise and network-wise), will locate you much more accurately with GPS, has significantly better photo quality (50% more pixels + auto-focus and auto-exposure where you click in the image), voice command, landscape keyboard for more apps, etc.

Video's very nice to have, and works as nicely as the still camera. The still camera not only focuses where you click, but also auto-exposes, so you can finally tell it "No, don't expose for the really bright sidewalk on the side, but rather on the face at the table".

Paired with the Prius III Bluetooth with no problems.

 

Uhhh, no. You're thinking of the original iPhone. They never dropped the price of the 3g until the 3gS came out, nor are they likely to drop the price of the 3gS before the next model comes out - most likely at the WWDC around this time in 2010.

I would also point out that the 3g was never HARDWARE updated, only software updated. Again a very likely scenario on the current 3gS. I'm not saying waiting is bad, I'm saying even if you don't you'll get the updates through software, most likely.

I waited a couple months before I bought the 3g, but jumped in on the 3gS...and I'm lovin' it.

Zhe Wiz