How is the O2/iPhone thing even legal?

[Fillado]

I wouldn't say they're the most important function, but they certainly are a deciding factor yes. I won't use the music player on my N95 8GB simply because... well... it isn't an iPod (nice way of saying the interface sucks!)

As for having an SLR I see the two as entirely different things. Do you carry your SLR everywhere? I like a good camera on a phone since it means i'll never be without the ability to take some good (in daylight) or kinda sucky but ok enough (in low-light) shots.

At the end of the day I should probably just leave everyone to enjoy their iPhones...

 

[Draeconis]

On another matter, my dad has the old non-3G iPhone and he is upgrading to the new one. Is there any chance I can unlock his old iPhone or something (is that legal?) and put whatever sim card in it I please? If I can do this I'll leave O2 and go for a really good value PAYG service.

Cheers,

Why not just do what I did; go into an O2 shop, say you'd like an iPhone PAYG sim card, and use that. You can then add the Unlimited WiFi Internet bolt-on thing for £10/m if you want. Simple no?

 

[Mr Spew]

I don't think you get my point.

My last phone cost £450 total by the end of the contract. Is an iPhone really worth £350 more?

Did you get such a good phone? Did you get unlimited data?

 

[Dodge777]

It all comes down to simple economics. The fact is that people are willing to pay a lot of money for the iPhone. This demand drives the price up. Clearly if all people thought the pricing was "obscene", then they wouldn't buy the product and the price would come down.

Apple will continue to charge high prices so long as consumers remain willing to pay such amounts. It simply doesn't matter whether it's "worth" it or not.

 

[fez]

They are sweet pieces of kit which is why people will pay for that. You get a phone, an ipod, loads of unique apps available and whatever contract you are on. As you said, you haggled to get your contract. When the iPhone is available on all networks and you can haggle then it will be cheaper but not till then.

How much would your contract have been without discounts etc.

 

[SimonR]

So for my £35 per month I get unlimitted data, email to my pocket 600 minutes, 500 texts, That alone is worth it to me, and tbh I dont see it as that much of a premium over other celular providers. Sure other companies have tried to lure 02 customers not to buy an evil iphone and to buy their latest shonky taiwanese flash-in-the-pan flavour of the week device, but tell me, besides the N95 how many of these are remembered a month after launch ? Not many, and why ? because as much as the iphone is a premium priced product, it performs. Maybe other devices to other stuff better, but as a whole package the iphone still represents damn good value for money. I have had windows mobile devices - never again. I have had Nokia phones - good as phones, but the daddy of the multimedia touch screen phone is the iphone. That is why all of the other companies use it as their benchmark and many of these devices are referred to as 'iphone like'.
I am an apple fanboi - I like their products and I can afford to pay for them.
Do they represent value for money - some yes, some no. Do I like apple stores ? No i hate them, they are staffed by supersilious nerds who want to be your friend and pretend to know everything about apple products, when in reality they know jack.... I know I go in everyday and ask questions like ..what is the native resolution of a mac mini?... to which they end up googling it, which I could have done.

But the simple answer is if you dont like what they produce ,dont buy it. Go buy some HTPC QuandDongJi X1 on a £5.99 contract .. but dont come crying when you get you first bill for £300 quid because you didnt read the smallprint that it only has 1mb of data alowance and your email header burned that up with your first email, that then crashed the phone and caused you to spend 3 days retyping all your contacts. That £35 per month for the iPhone might seem good value then.

 

[Barks]

The iPhone has the majority of features that the majority of users demand.

Do Apple give a rat's ass that a few geeks demand a 5MP camera. You bet they don't. Take a look at these phones that have 10MP cameras. They are awful. The quality sucks. If you want to be taking photos, use a dedicated digital camera.

As for other features, who uses MMS anyway? Now I can understand the desire for more storage but a lot of the people dissing the iPhone for the sake of it, perhaps because it lacks in certain features, need to realize that for them the Nokia N series is a superior choice.

 

[OllyM]

It's legal in the same way the Blackberry Storm is exclusive to Vodafone etc.

Why people keep quoting the 'total' cost of an iPhone with the contract I do not know - didn't realise networks were giving away free minutes and texts now!