AT&T to lose iPhone exclusivity this week?!

[thewayne]

"An inside source over at HotHardware reports that AT&T will lose their iPhone exclusivity on 1/27, coincident with Apple's upcoming press event next week, though it's not yet clear what other carriers will be stepping in to pick up the iPhone. For anyone who has followed the saga, you may notice that you haven't seen AT&T fighting to extend their original exclusive agreement as of late. In fact, they have spent most of their time fighting Verizon's negative ad campaigns. This may not be all that surprising. Inside of AT&T, word is that the iPhone is causing more trouble than ever before. On some level, having the iPhone is hurting AT&T's image. Do you remember hearing about AT&T's 'horrible network' before the iPhone? The iPhone itself doesn't really handle the switch from 3G to EDGE very gracefully, so calls that are in-progress tend to fail whenever 3G connections aren't optimal and the phone attempts to step down to EDGE. It seems that AT&T may finally be tired of taking the heat."

http://apple.slashdot.org/story/10/01/24/1227217/Rumor-mdash-ATampT-Losing-iPhone-Exclusivity-Next-Week?art_pos=1

I had heard that AT&T's exclusive contract in the US was up this year and that it was likely someone else, or perhaps multiple carriers, would gain access to the iPhone. This is a VERY good thing, as AT&T has lousy/no service in my area.

I bought an iPod Touch last year as a PDA as it was obvious that Palm had ceded the PDA market to Microsoft (they have since dropped all PDAs and only make cell phones). I was doubtful at first because of unfamiliarity with the device, but the description of programs available made it look like it might be a good replacement for my Palm, and $190 for a factory refurb unit from Apple (which has a longer warranty than the one you buy at Best Buy) seemed like a reasonable amount of money to experiment with, especially compared to the price of a new HP/Compaq PDA.

I have been extremely happy with it. In fact, I'm on my second Touch. I bought an 8 gig, then my wife was playing with it and found her favorite card game, Set, was available for it. So I ceded my 8 gig and bought a refurb 32 gig.

Depending on who picks up the iPhone and their coverage in my area, I'll seriously consider getting one in a few months. There's no way I'm going to immediately jump on the band wagon considering all of the problems AT&T has had with their network capacity and the iPhone. I saw an article recently that said AT&T needs to spend $5 billion to bring their network up to where it needs to be to cope with iPhone traffic, that ain't gonna happen.

Comments

[cteare.livejournal.com]

I've had my iPhone for a year now, and I don't have any complaints. Then again I'm not heavily into talking on the phone and surfing the web at the same time. What has really helped me is the availability to send and receive emails. I'm not into texting, but I do email back and forth a lot.

[thewayne.livejournal.com]

It always boils down to different people use different features. There used to be something called the 80/20 rule when talking about a program's features, such as Word. 80% of the people only use 20% or less of the program's features, but they use a different 20%. I can't really see regularly talking and surfing, but I can see an occasional use: meeting up with people for a movie or something. I have definitely had occasion to need to give someone an address or phone number while talking to them.

My major concern is all-in-one devices, where you run a risk of one part failing, the others are fine, but you lose everything when you send it out for repairs. Having been using two iPods for half a year and seeing their reliability, I'm less concerned about the iPhone. But one thing that has constantly concerned me about many Apple products, and it's an increasing concern, is their sealed design, meaning that the user can't replace the battery if it fails, and it's pretty much the single most common point of failure over time. At least with the iPhone/Touch, you only have yourself to blame if it isn't backed up somewhat regularly.

[cteare.livejournal.com]

I can attest to the hardiness of the design. Hubby's iPhone fell out of his pocket and he drove the jeep over it. It still worked. I think the only thing he lost was the camera function. It looked awful. He went ahead and replaced it when the contract ran out, so he could upgrade as well. He worked with the crunched phone for 8 months though.

[thewayne.livejournal.com]

That's pretty darn fortuitous. I could definitely live without the camera, I could probably count the number of times that I've used the one in mine on one hand with fingers left over.

I've had good luck with phones, my first cell phone was the Motorola monster that you could put in your back pocket if you didn't mind it sticking up to your belt line. I was working at the police department at the time, and the radio coordinator had a battery from one of those puppies in a ziploc hanging from his office door. It had a bullet dent in it. A cop had one in his back pocket, some perp popped a round from a snub .38 special at him, and it didn't penetrate the battery. Probably saved his hip.

Me, I've only had two unfortunate incidents with cell phones in the 15+ years I've been using them. The first was I fumbled one in my condo and dropped it in a fountain. Fortunately that phone used SIM chips, and I didn't lose my phone book. Then about 4 years ago, I was taking photos near the train tracks and lost my phone. I got another, and about a month later the lost one was found by a city worker who responded to an EMS call by the tracks. Very lucky on that one. But I had a boss who killed phones probably 3 or 4 times a year just through bad luck.