AT&T aren’t making their money off of the handsets they buy, they make it off the service you use. When they charge EXTRA for simply having an iPhone, yet you get nearly the same base service as another AT&T user with a cheaper phone, it seems like there should be something done to keep those higher paying customers happy.

Subsidizing a couple hundred dollars for the phone to extend the contract out an additional year or two would be well worth it for AT&T, since the premium fees they are charging amount to double or triple the profits easily anyway. It seems this time, to me, AT&T are going too far with their greed factor. Users have no other choice but to pony up for the iPhone experience as AT&T determines it should be.

Isn’t that more than a little anti-competitive? Shouldn’t there be a friggin choice between carriers to keep these illogical and ridiculous costs in check? Yes, there should be. The government is already intervening, and I’m sure that in the near future we will see something done about it.

I think the biggest issue is that it’s almost as if iPhone customers (which I am by the way, still using my first gen,) have a certain sense of entitlement, there’s an expectation that Steve Jobs, Apple, AT&T, *whomever* is just going to jump in like an angel investor and hand them free phones (or severely discounted ones at least) every time there’s a new one.

It’s like going to the car dealership within a year of buying your current vehicle, seeing a newer model, and then demanding that the dealer sell you that one below cost because, after all, you bought one last year. Not only that but it’s not as if you’re trading it in, you’re keeping both.

I’m still on the fence about upgrading. I was one of the ‘crazy people’ who stood out in line the first day and paid the 600 bucks for the original model, and I guess that fact stuck in my head when the 3G model came out. I didn’t buy it mostly because 3G service where I live sucked at the time, but the fact I’d paid 600 dollars for a phone a year prior was a secondary consideration. A new model out now is great but I can’t help feel like they’ll always be this ‘arms race’ so to speak where I sign into a 2 year agreement and a new shiny phone comes out a year later. I’d rather choose which generation I get and skip the updates in between.

This is actually a somewhat arbitrary figure. The cost to Apple to manufacture the iPhone 3GS 32GB model is likely not above $275. Even if you factor in marketing and distribution, it doesn’t add up to close to $799. Apple’s inflating the MSRP, as is AT&T. I don’t oppose companies making a profit, but I do think AT&T’s pricing, for everything from phones to minutes to messaging to data plans, is too damned high relative to other carriers.

* A physical keyboard
* Full SMS/MMS capability
* Better camera
* Video capability
* Background applications
* Sturdy phone

She misses the App Store, but gets that on an iPhone touch. She can carry the E71 in her jeans’ back pocket. She simply loves the keyboard and the attention from other teens about the phone.

My daughter likes to have IM, Twitter, texting and other apps going at once. Can’t do that on iPhone.

But she doesn’t find Web browsing to be as good an experience. I agree. The iPhone is better for that.

Over the weekend, she recorded a video review of the E71. I should have posted it already. So you can hear it from her.

How does your daughter like her E71 now? Does she use it for things other than messaging style tasks – IM, twitter, etc?

Funnily enough after all my Nokia bashing i find myself a (begrudging) Nokia 6300 user as well, now that my iPhone 2G has died… I will never say another bad word about Nokia lest i’m doomed to play snake on a greyscale display if this one breaks too…

A friend bought my Nokia N96 and the N79 my daughter abandoned for the Nokia E71. If not for the sale of these other cell phones, I wouldn’t buy the N97.

As for my wife, I offered to let her keep the Mac. Yesterday. Monday’s MacBook Pro announcement brought down price of new aluminum MacBooks.My father-in-law would have paid the extra for a newer Mac. But my wife said, “I want to stay on this track.” Perhaps Window 7 will suit her? We’ll see.

http://www.funnyordie.com/videos/c010c101ac/bill-gate-s-wife-melinda-has-a-dirty-little-secret