Why won’t I be rushing out for the new Apple iPhone?
Well, as a Mac lover with a heap of Apple products to my name you’d think i was waiting in eager anticipation for the new Apple iPhone.. Especially as my Vodafone contract ran out last week.
After looking at and having a play with the iPhone and it’s data tariffs I have decided to not only stick with my current service provider but to also renew a 12 month contract and order a new phone.
One of the main reasons why the iPhone is not that appealing to me at the moment probably has something to do with being an ipod touch owner. I won’t go on about how liberating the iCal and Address Book syncing are, coupled with the always ready and super effective WiFi connectivity. The only thing it misses for me is the ability to use Apples ‘Mail’ app. At present though I survive with webmail through wifi.
So, whilst standing at the cross roads, I looked at all the things I really needed in a phone, what my current provider would bribe me with for staying and the over all cost of switching.
Once you phone up a company like Vodafone and say you want to leave, you get a whole new level of customer service. I sometimes imagine a room full of well paid, well trained staff. You know, the ones that used to exist in other departments in the company.. Like customer service.
If your contract is up this or next month, now is the time for you to do some serious bartering. I imagine a whole heap of phone companies are pulling out all the stops to stop their clients migrating.
I uttered the magic words, PAK number and iPhone and in no time at all I was pretty much customizing my next 12 months of phone contract. Yes, you heard me right.. 12 months. If you insist you can still get a 12 month contract. This along with loads of free minutes anytime, 500 texts and free calls to landlines at weekends and I was a happy customer. Then couple that with a free Sony Ericsson K850i (£350 off contract) and I was sold. I am paying half the price of an O2 iPhone contract so if i really wanted to, I could get myself a ‘3’ mobile modem at £15 a month to free my laptop and still have change.
I think If the iPhone had a 5 megapixel camera I would maybe have been tempted. Same if there were decent data packages around that didn’t take the piss.
I refuse to get suckered into the hype. Yes it is a beautiful piece of technology but it comes at a massive price to the early adopter and if my ipod does half of it then I can live with that till there comes a time when an unlocked iPhone is on the street at a more reasonable less sell-your-soul kind of price. A jail-broken ipod would probably do it though, but we are really very close to third party apps becoming mainstream anyway.
So for the time being I will still carry the two devices around. My iPod touch and my phone. Although as I may well also be leaving my pocketable camera at home. I may be lighter in the pockets. We will have to see how the 5 mega pixel camera pans out.
Regarding syncing it to my mac, one google search later and i found Feisar who supplied two plug-ins for a couple of quid and it saved me a trawl of the net. I bought their handy address book app as well but I still don’t know what it does.
It’s great having a compact phone once again. My last phone was a Nokia E61 and yes it did a lot of stuff but you knew when you had it on you and you couldn’t sit down with it in the back pocket for fear of getting an ass full of glass. Also the mail and data tariffs are extortionate and with more and more WiFi around I was finding it becoming redundant as i prefer my ipod for browsing the net.
If i didn’t have great loyalty bonuses for sticking with my present service provider and wasn’t currently the owner of an ipod touch, would i be getting the iPhone?
I still think not. Not yet.
With technology moving so fast, an eighteen month contract is just ridiculous. I will at some point have an iphone but i have a strong feeling it will be off-contract and be a very different model to the one out in a couple of weeks.
Although if they put an 8 mega pixel Leica-lensed camera in one tomorrow.. I may well be camping out with the Uber-geeks on a cold dark November night. 🙂
