I certainly got a lot of abuse from Apple fanboys for my post 51 reasons not to buy the iPhone. I got called: a “f**king idiot”, “pickiest man I have ever met” (if I was picky I would point out that you haven’t met me) and “a dick”, and these are a just a fraction of tirades from fanatic fanboys which I could post.
Even though I gave 51 reasons not to buy it, I didn’t say I didn’t like it, did I? I think all the reasons I gave for not buying the iPhone are true, some more important than others, and some of the reasons were tongue in cheek. It’s clear fanboys don’t have a sense of humour. Maybe I should get upset that fake Steve Jobs called the British “lazy stupid brits” for refusing to line up for the iPhone launch. Even thought I said there are “51 reasons not to buy the iPhone” I can understand why people like/love it. In fact, I like it, the interface is beautiful, it’s extremely intuitive and easy to use, the 8gb hard drive is the joint biggest in the market, and its pretty. Having said that I’m still not going to buy one because of these key reasons:
-
Its too expensive – (£899 over contract length) for a phone without 3G and only a 2 mega pixel camera.
-
The price will drop soon – If we follow the America launch plan, the price will drop in the next few months. The 8gb cost $399 in the US ($599 at launch)
-
It’s first generation – within 6 months to a year the teething problems with be sorted, and a 16gb with 3g (HSPDA) version will be available
-
Expensive tariffs – You only get 200 mins and 200 text for £35 a month. This is 40% more than the normal O2 200 minutes and 200 texts tariff which only costs £25. You do get “unlimited” data but because the iPhone is not 3G I can’t see many people using it to browse the internet at dial up speeds.
As so many people tried to say that the iPhone isn’t expensive I will try and clear this up once and for all: N95 handset free, 18 months x £30 for O2 400 price plan (400 mins and 500 texts) plus £35 cashback = £505 total cost over 18 contract length (/mobile-phone-offer/167415-0/)
iPhone £269, 18 months x £35 for O2 200 price plan (200 mins and 200 texts) = £899 total over 18 month contract length
That means that the iPhone is 78% more expensive than the Nokia N95. Plus the O2 400 price plan gives you double the mins and more than double texts.
11 Comments
Well i bought one it cost me £269.99 and 20 quid to unlock it so i saved a fortune and so far im impressed and with adding apps and games and other features its good one thing i will point out i thin iphone are ripping people off forcing contract just to use the phone so my advice if you like it just buy it and unlock it and dont believe the rubbish about unlocking will kill it.
You have no evidence that Apple will reduce the price. Yes they lowered it in the US, and we have had the positives from that as well. The UK price was converted from the lowered US price, so this current generation will remain at its current price.
Has anyone ever used an iPhone who has contributed above… Edge is NOT usable in my experience… I have one word for you… Latency (or for people with a monosyllabic vocabulary, lag). Really, you thought 3G was kind of laggy… Edge is like asking your Grandmother to climb a flight of stairs, find the web page you want, and then getting her to cartwheel back down them again, before photocopying it and handing it to you… all that without a hint of a Dame Thora Hurd Stenna Chair Lift!! (The Dame Thora Hurd Stenna Chair Lift analogy is so 1.5G anyway fellas)
Oh and if Julian is so bad, I think he’s done a f*&king marvelous job of making people, who wouldn’t otherwise, return to the dialaphone site.. again… and again.. and again… talk about making a site sticky!!! This site is to mobile phone chat as an Agar plate is to bacteria… (this means good, for the retarded amongst you, NB. I’m talking about Alex Johnson specifically)
Sour grapes you say? I don’t think Dialaphone could really give two hoots… I’ve seen it quoted that O2 are expecting at least 250K users to sign up to iPhone…. big deal… by the time they spend the cash rolling out their Edge network, employing a whole call centre of staff to support the iPhone (btw, this is just round the corner from me in Glasgow so it does exist) I doubt they’ll make much of a profit. I guess that is why they are charging over the odds for the tariffs. 250k new punters who aren’t profitable… marvelous!
Unlimited data you say!? At the speed of Edge, that’s like saying unlimited coffee is a good thing when it takes 5 hours to boil a kettle… You’ll only wait so long before giving up.
And Alex Johnson, no relation to Boris I hope, did you just say ” If you have friends with simple phones, look up the email format for their phone numbers – on that included data plan”. Oh my God, you sad Bast*rd. I have a million and one better things to do than this… seriously. My friends and I have lives… this means we don’t have time to worry about the email gateway address for our phones… I don’t know anyone who knows this… I know all my friends’ phone numbers and in this day of digital convergence it makes total sense to send an MMS to that number. Oh, and if you think MMS is so 2002 then, blow me Grampa, the first email was sent in 1971… apparently you find that the more modern and preferable method to send multi media.
Ross
Well I guess Julian is just a figment of Dial-A-Phone imagination, created to cause controversy. To me it sounds like a Dial-A-Phone sour grapes campaign against Apple for not lettings them sell the IPhone.
Whoa there.
“You do get “unlimited†data but because the iPhone is not 3G I can’t see many people using it to browse the internet at dial up speeds.”
So you just sweep that under the carpet in your price comparison?
1. EDGE is perfectly usable. 3G would be nice (though I prefer battery life as this is now my Pod too). Don’t forget the included wi-fi, and most BlackBerries have been limited to GPRS till this EDGE roll-out. GPRS is awful but it’s what I’ve been using on a BlackBerry till now anyway.
2. The N95′s built-in browser is crap. So what if it’s fast, it’s crap. You simply can’t compare that with the iPhone experience. Ah, you might say, but I would use it as a modem for my laptop. With an iPhone _you don’t have to carry the laptop_. The reason not to browse the internet on a phone till now has partly been a function of speed, I’m sure, but it will also have reflected the utter crapness of the experience once you do. The iPhone completely changes all that.
3. Email…? Speed is much less relevant, but free data is definitely relevant. I don’t think you get to gloss over that. Now as your own maths makes clear, there’s a cost for that – at least £306 over your N95 plan, or as much as £486 if you take into account the difference in the voice and SMS part of the plan. If you don’t value data then sure that’s a lot. But I think mot people buying an iPhone will use the data – not just browsing but email, weather, stocks. And don’t forget that notional £486 includes, functionally, an iPod touch. The 8GB model is £199. That means 18 months’ data costs £287, or £15.94/mo. BlackBerry data starts at £10/mo, and is capped at 200MB and does not include wi-fi (and requires using a tacky little browser), and FWIW you can’t edit Word documents on a BlackBerry, either. But the iPhone does it all in one device, which personally I absolutely do want.
Look, I’m not saying the iPhone is cheap but I am saying that playing the numbers the way you play them Julian does not scream “rip off” to me, but rather a simple transparent pricing plan that actually stands up to scrutiny. If you don’t want it then don’t get it but there’s really no evidence that the N95 plan is an obviously better deal, while there is plenty of evidence that unless you positively need GPS or tethered browsing or a 5MP camera (in which case let me introduce you to SatNav, a data card, and a digital camera respectively), the iPhone is the better device. YMMV.
As to other points, well on multiple SMS: agreed, though not that two wrongs make a right, but same on a BlackBerry. They also made the conceptual decision to mimic a chat client so this was obviously thought about at the design stage, whether or not they came to the right conclusion. But MMS? What is this, 2002? Does anyone care? Why can’ t you just use email? If you have friends with simple phones, look up the email format for their phone numbers – on that included data plan… Voice dialling is an obvious omission for car use for example, though on every phone I’ve ever had it was more hassle than it’s worth. And my car stereo does its own voice dialling anyway and I’m sure I’m not the only one with that feature.
If I were a cynical man Julian I might guess that Dial-A-Phone was long N95′s with the new Nokia N82 just coming out the door, and maybe a bit annoyed not to be invited to the iPhone party. Unfair…?
If the iPhone has done one thing, it has divided technophiles. Julian, I know exactly where you’re coming from, and if I’m honest (and I’m nothing of a fan boy at all), your first “51 reasons” post didn’t really come across very well. Had a tone of sour grapes to it.
The iPhone has been sold on hype and (dare I say it) hysteria. In its current form, it’s not the most technically advanced piece of kit. Ground-breaking user interface, yes, but the specifications of the phone are not good.
I’ll be honest. I’d love one. But the money aspect is too important for me. If it wasn’t, I’d have been at the head of a queue on Friday night. Fair play to those who’ve plumped for one – I hope you enjoy it, and if you ever get fed up with it, I’ll take it off you!
Look, you wouldn’t be criticising this phone to anywhere near this degree if o2 actually allowed dialaphone to sell it. Why aren’t you writing blogs moaning about every other phone launched in the run up to Christmas? Simple – people with money to spend are an easy target. Boo hoo – I have the money to ‘waste’ on an iphone and 18 month contract.
Mac fanboys make me sick. Its a telephone. You can’t say it’s an internet portal if its connectivity is limited. It doesn’t make sense – it looks like Apple has either a) rushed a release and neglected to up the technology to current standards or b) taken advantage of pathetic Mac fanatics who would buy a turd if it was branded appropriately!
Sure, it looks lovely. But haven’t we all been brought up to never judge things on face value? I still think that that technology needs to do even more and be even more flexible before it is truly useful.. and batteries need to last a lot longer. Until then, it’s still just a concept.
The iphone is NOT expensive because you get access and use of 100% of its features with two taps. What’s the point of saving a few pounds when you can’t access its features like the Nokia (hey, look, it’s a submenu to a submenu!). You’re right if you don’t need real internet access, visual voicemail, real syncing, ipod & a video player … if you don’t need that, don’t buy an iphone … is it perfect, no … and yes, there are some areas where it could be improved but the iphone is to a car what other cell phones are to a donkey cart … a donkey cart has its good points but in the big scheme, you still have a donkey cart while I drive away … so yes, would I prefer the Nokia over no phone – of course but to the iphone, it is the **s.
Same here… I’m a bit of a Mac boy… but the iPhone is so…erm 1990′s with a touchscreen.
Here are my reasons:
1) No MMS… yeah, include a cheapie camera and then no MMS.. that make SO NO sense!
2) EDGE… I’ve heard that a fleet of pigeons with very small messages tied to their legs are, by comparison, 3G to this dinosaur.
3) Apple say that a 3G version of the phone is likely in Q3 of next year but that, in the meantime, O2 will be putting a lot of effort into upping the current 30% population coverage of EDGE. Now, I might be a pessimist, but if you were O2, wouldn’t you drag your heals until then on your EDGE rollout saving both time and money, safe in the knowledge that 3G will be the data network of choice next Autumn?! I mean, rolling out a data network takes a long time and certainly more than a year – perhaps this is why Apple have been decidedly wooly about publishing any specs on O2′s EDGE network.
4) Battery life… I want to go to the gym and watch an hour of video while I’m on the cycle. i want to make an hour of calls. I want to listen to some music on my commute to and from work. I want to check my trains are on time via wifi before I leave in the morning. I want to buy a couple of tracks I heard on my lunch break. I want to show my boss pictures of my new house to prove I really needed that short notice week off. I want to hook up to The Cloud and discover where I can buy a small Nuclear Power Station that I can drag behind me because my iPhone’s battery lasts about as long as my local Vicar at an orgy!
5) And haptic feedback… I’m in a club… I’m playing it cool… I’m texting my friend to say he should get his ass here… My face is illuminated by the glow of an iPhone with no haptic feedback in front of the girl I’m chatting up… erm.. what’s wrong with this picture…
I think 51 reasons not to buy an iPhone is optimistic…
Ross
Well I won’t be buying one either ….. yet.
I’m normally an early adopter when it comes to gadgets and love the convergence offered by the iPhone.
However I’m going against my normal buying practice and waiting for a model with
3G
16GB
Voice Dialing
full function Bluetooth including file transfer capabilities and, ideally,
a user replaceable battery.
I doubt I’m the only one …..