So, the rumors had been floating around that because of Starbucks’s switch to AT&T for their Wi-Fi provider (ditching former partner-in-crime T-Mobile), iPhone users would be able to surf the web without paying a single dime. But anecdotal reports are not enough to sate this blogger—I needed first hand proof.
And so I stopped by just outside of the Starbucks near my home—I’m not allowed inside anymore, after an unfortunate incident with a half-caf mocha latte—and fired up Safari. Sure enough, the screen at the left greeted me, asking me to enter my 10-digit phone number. I managed to scrounge that up from my increasingly unreliable memory and pop it in. Blammo—yes, that’s precisely the sound it made—I was online. For free!
Don’t get me wrong: I’m not about to switch back to Starbucks just for the free iPhone Wi-Fi. After that traumatic coffee-related mishap, it just doesn’t feel safe to me, anymore. But it’s handy to know that the next time I’m stranded and the EDGE connection just isn’t cutting it, there’s somewhere I can turn. On every street corner. In the United States.
If you’re deaf or hard of hearing, there’s been nothing preventing you from getting an iPhone, but you might have been a little bit miffed that you had to pay for voice service that you’d never use. No longer, however, as AT&T has announced today their new Text Accessibility Plan for iPhone.
The TAP plan costs $40/month and lets you ditch the voice part of the plan, while adding unlimited SMS text messages and holding onto the iPhone’s full unlimited data plan. That works out pretty evenly, since both unlimited SMS and the iPhone’s data plan usually cost about $20 apiece. Just in case you want to lend your phone to someone else, you can still make phone calls at a cost of $0.40/minute. And you can still get Visual Voicemail, too (though I’m not sure how useful that will be to most hearing impaired users).
Not just anybody can sign up for the plan, however. You’ll need to fill out an eligibility form (PDF link), which requires you get a Certification of Disability from a qualifying certifying agent.
File this one under "I guess this is good news." AT&T has announced a policy change: if you begin or renew a contract as of May 25th, the early termination fee (currently a flat $175) will decrease by $5 for each month of service you've already paid for. So, for example, if you decide to cancel a year into your contract, you'll pay $60 less—just $115.
That's...interesting. I suppose every little bit helps. Granted, the lowest you can get on the standard 2-year contract is about $60—and there's probably not much point to canceling when you've only got a month left.
As AT&T points out, there are still plenty of options if you want to avoid contracts altogether, although the only one that really applies to iPhone users is buying a "pay as you go" plan. Personally, I look forward to the day that cell phone contracts bite the big one, but it appears that's still to come.
[via iPod Observer]
Looking to pick up an el cheapo iPhone? Look no further than your local AT&T store, which is currently selling refurbished 8GB iPhone models for a sweet, sweet $250. That's a good $150 less than a brand new unit from Apple. While you can sometimes also get refurbs from Apple itself, they aren't offering them at the moment, so AT&T is the only game in town (and it appears as though you may only be able to net this deal online).
Of course, you'll need to activate and sign a 2 year contract with AT&T, as per usual, and there's a limit of one per customer. We presume it also includes the standard one-year warranty (you can extend that by two years for $69). If you've been holding out for an iPhone price drop, this might be the best deal you see for a while.
[via Consumerist]
If your current AT&T contract isn't plan enough for you, then you might be interested to know that the cell provider has started offering an unlimited calling plan package. Now, for the low, low, low price of $120/month, you can chat away on your iPhone 24/7 without incurring those nasty overage charges.
Everything else about the plan remains as you'd expect: unlimited data, visual voicemail, unlimited mobile-to-mobile (er, duh?), unlimited nights and weekends (um, double duh?), unlimited rollover minutes (okay, guys, we get the point of "unlimited"), and 200 text messages.
Wait, 200 text message? Geez, for $120/month, you'd think they might toss on a couple extra texts, huh? Perhaps, but then you'd think wrong, pal.
[via Gizmodo]
With the release of the new 16GB iPhone yesterday, there was some question over whether or not AT&T would make you sign a new two-year contract if you merely upgraded your phone. Wired reported that some complaints on Apple's discussion boards indicated they were being told they had to get a new contract, while others were saying "not so much."
iLounge got the skinny, direct from Mark Siegel over at AT&T:
“If you upgrade from an 8 to a 16 GB iPhone, you sign a new contract. However, we automatically backdate it to the starting point of your contract on the 8 GB phone.” He added that the company “will make every effort to ensure that our reps provide customers with the correct information,” and clarified that customers should activate the SIM card that comes with the new model.Personally, I guess that seems somewhat overly complicated to me. I mean, if you're backdating it anyway, why do they even have to sign a new one? Why go through the whole rigmarole? Ah well, I guess they wouldn't be in the cell phone market if they did things the sensible way.
3G, 3G, 3G—it's like the Marcia Brady of wireless technologies. Some days, that's all I hear about. No, the iPhone hasn't gone 3G yet, despite word from those on high that the technology will find its way into the handset by year's end. But, as you may recall from Steve's introduction of the cell-phone-to-end-all-cell-phones last year, one of the reasons Apple opted not to include 3G was because the network simply wasn't widespread enough in the US.
Seems that may be changing, though. AT&T has announced plans to expand their 3G technology, HSUPA, into 80 new cities, bringing the availability to 350 "leading" markets in the US by the end of 2008, including the top 100 US cities (by population, we presume).
So what do we get out of it? HSUPA offers faster download speeds, in the range of 600 to 1,400 kbps, and much faster uplink speeds, around 500 to 800 kbps. By contrast, the current EDGE network used by the iPhone has a theoretical maximum speed of 473.6 kbps. Très speedy.
AT&T's not really giving details on what exactly those 80 new cities are at present, but we imagine that it's probably not, oh, Maza, ND. Yet.
[via Engadget]
Patent lawsuits are more common these days than...uh, pre-approved credit card mailers. (Sorry. Looked around my desk and couldn't find anything else. And people say writing is easy. As if.)
Apple is again being slapped by a "some thing that does some stuff" patent suit, this time by Minerva Industries, a company just granted a patent for a "mobile entertainment and communication device" that has "a cellular or satellite telephone capable of wireless communication with the internet."
Ah. Huh. Minerva is also suing AT&T and 31 other tech/cell companies, claiming all of them sell/produce devices that infringe on their patent. Their patent that covers entertainment gadgets that connect to cell networks. Experts believe the patent is too broad and will be shot down in court...but c'mon: Doesn't anyone check this stuff beforehand?
That's it. I'm filing a patent for "any device that accepts any input, produces any output, or requires power to function," and then I'm going to sue every tech company, engineer, and electronics student in the country until I'm rich enough to buy Hawaii. And if you've got a problem with that...well, take it to the USPTO. They obviously know what they're doing.
[via Macworld UK]
The other day, we talked about everybody's favorite mystery: what happened to all those iPhones that Apple says they've sold, but which AT&T hasn't activated? The consensus seems to be that these phones are being unlocked and emigrating from the US to countries where the carriers don't yet have deals with Apple.
At this point, the evidence is pretty much anecdotal, but that doesn't make it any less compelling. Over at the New York Times's Bits blog, Damon Darlin has posted an extensive list of comments from readers that report iPhones being used and sold in more than a dozen countries around the world, from Canada to Uganda and almost everywhere in between.
Does this mean terrible things for Apple? Speculation has long been that Apple gets a cut of the carriers' incomes per subscriber, so some have suggested that the "missing" iPhones could mean millions in lost revenue for Apple.
That's hardly true, though, as ITWire's Stephen Withers rightly points out:
There's no suggestion that iPhones are in short supply, so you can't argue that each one that moves across the borders denies Apple the revenue it would have received indirectly from a customer in the country where it was originally sold.It's not as if those purchasing the iPhone for use in other countries are some how depriving users in France, Germany, the UK, or the US of iPhones. In fact, the very point we're arguing seems to say the iPhones are plentiful: if they weren't being bought by others around the world, they probably just wouldn't be bought. And since Apple obviously makes good money on each iPhone sold, whether or not the iPhone is activated through a partner, it's not as if they're losing money. Rather, the money they get from the carriers is just icing on a delicious and profitable cake.
