Best Cell Phone That Doesn't Suck...?

[ChicagoTex]

Because of that, Verizon has a limit on data transfers per month presumably to keep people from using their cell phone as their 24/7 internet access for computers at home.

AT&T has a similar mechanism in place. The ability to tether with your iPhone requires a seperate monthly fee (a hefty $45/month with a 4GB limit IIRC). This is to prevent people from using their unlimited data plan (not that they offer those anymore to iPhone owners) to replace their internet needs entirely.

EDIT, this information is incorrect, see my next post for correct info. I was going to change this post, but then the following post would make no sense, so i'll leave it as is.

It's a feature I'd pay at most $10 a month for, but by the same token I could be content with the 200mb/month limit I have for my phone (as I rarely use more than 70mb/month for data).

[Hmac]

My $30/month data plan for my Verizon iPhone (not including my 21% FAN discount) is for unlimited data. If I wanted to set my phone up as a hot spot for up to 5 wireless devices, it would cost me an extra $20/month (minus 21%).

[ChicagoTex]

I just double checked the pricing on the tethering package. I misunderstood. It's $45/mo for 4GB/mo between the phone and any devices it may be tethered to, it replaces the regular data package (which is $25 for 2GB/mo or $15 for 200MB/mo) so it's only an extra $20 to enable tethering, and it raises your overall monthly data limit to 4GB.

[Palmguy]

AT&T has a similar mechanism in place. The ability to tether with your iPhone requires a seperate monthly fee (a hefty $45/month with a 4GB limit IIRC). This is to prevent people from using their unlimited data plan (not that they offer those anymore to iPhone owners) to replace their internet needs entirely.

It's a feature I'd pay at most $10 a month for, but by the same token I could be content with the 200mb/month limit I have for my phone (as I rarely use more than 70mb/month for data).

Is it that much with Android phones as well (for tethering)? Geez.

Pays to be tech savvy, I suppose...

[QuietShootr]

It pays even more to have a grandfathered unlimited data plan when you switch to an iPhone

[ChicagoTex]

It pays even more to have a grandfathered unlimited data plan when you switch to an iPhone

Only if you actually use a lot of data. After a full YEAR of owning my iPhone I had clocked a whopping 1GB of data used, so I jumped at the chance to save $15 month by accepting a 200MB/mo limit.

[Hmac]

I'm not a fan of the iPhone because of the network issue. I've had to lend my phone to a bunch of iPhone users so they could make a call because their network sucked.

...

The Blackberries are much more limited than the Android phones or the iPhone because of the design of the phone and the lack of a large app development effort for them, but many people swear that some of the Blackberries are the best on-the-go email machines available. I say "some" because some of them are truly horrid and unreliable. My brother, for example, was issued a BB as was the rest of his team and every phone they had was tits up inside of two months.
...

The iPhone users are generally very happy with their phones, even when they are sheepishly forced to borrow yours to make a call because their network sucks.

iPhone wireless performance issues are going to be network dependent, not phone dependent. Just like the ads (both sides) suggest, network performance across the country will be more reliable and more widely available with Verizon, faster with AT&T. It will be interesting to see how fast Verizon is able to roll out LTE across the country. That might make me more inclined to switch over to a Verizon iPad. For the time being though, Verizon's "3G" is kind of lame compared to AT&T's 3G performance. Note that we're talking about data performance, not voice. The ability to make a voice call is about signal strength, not data speeds.





It's interesting to see how many corporations have switched over the iPhone and iPad as communications tools. Blackberries do perform well as email machines but that's about it. Their OS is cumbersome and inconsisent and, in my experience, prone to crashing. And I agree, the Blackberry hardware is awful. Their success as a business tool and penetration into that world has been largely related to the rather draconian control corporate IT people can take of the phone and determine its use and security policies via the Blackerry Enterprise Server. That implementation pushes email to the phone instantaneously. It's a great service, but it also gives over total control of the the phone's usefulness to the IT department. I've had several Blackberries. I hated them. Glad to finally get an iPhone, if for no other reason than to keep the IT people from having input into how I can use it.

[QuietShootr]

Only if you actually use a lot of data. After a full YEAR of owning my iPhone I had clocked a whopping 1GB of data used, so I jumped at the chance to save $15 month by accepting a 200MB/mo limit.

Well, I do use a lot of data, and I like to tether when I'm not home. It's nice to be able to surf on a netbook in the boonies without worrying about limits.

[chadbag]

Well, I do use a lot of data, and I like to tether when I'm not home. It's nice to be able to surf on a netbook in the boonies without worrying about limits.

I use a fair amount of data when I am not at home but why would I lug around a netbook when I have my iPhone? I have a Dell 9" netbook that I had an AT&T 3G dongle for. I found that I rarely used it as it was much more convenient to look something up on the iPhone than open up the netbook and have to carry it around. The phone screen is smaller but it is much more convenient. Once I got the iPad, I have not booted the netbook since.

YMMV of course and I am not knocking your use, just giving a different experience.

[ChicagoTex]

Well, I do use a lot of data, and I like to tether when I'm not home. It's nice to be able to surf on a netbook in the boonies without worrying about limits.

Rock on, brother. I'm just saying that I personally found that the fact that I wasn't spending lots of time streaming video and music on my phone made my data usage less than 10% per month of what I had initially anticipated and that people with usage habits similar to me need not fret that they can no longer acquire the unlimited data package. Even 200mb per month is a lot more than most people realize.