Comments on: AT&T and Getting an iPhone – Worth It? Possible? Fair? Suck?

By: josh

josh — Tue, 15 Jul 2008 06:08:27 +0000

I had the first iPhone, my girlfriend had a motorola something.

I wanted the new 3g and wanted her to have my old iphone. I backed up my iphone with itunes.

I bought the new iphone 3g and they set me up at the apple store, which shut the att service off on my old iphone.

I went home, restored my contacts from itunes and made sure my new 3g was working properly.

I completely reset my old iphone, which takes about an hour, then put my girlfriends SIM card in it.

I hooked the old iphone into itunes and was able to activate it with her number.

Three days later…

Sometimes my 3g gps shows her location, not mine. weird.

i will be going to att and getting some answers.

By: Russ

Russ — Tue, 15 Jul 2008 02:57:05 +0000

I went ahead and got the iPhone.

The rub here is this: Activating in store “seems” like it was part of the culprit for a phone that I had to fully restore once already.

Also, I seem to have a hardware issue where my phone seems to fall off whatever network I’m on; I’ll notice it when I stop getting emails in a reasonable amount of time. Since there are still lines up the wazoo at the local stores, I’m not about to go and try to get a replacement for a few days, and that kind of stinks.

I think we all feel like we should get something new that is, well, new. When it’s less than perfect AND new, we start to feel cheated and all the small things seem to grown exponentially.

I’m getting used to it–and I’m glad I bought it. There is enough in the UI to keep me going for awhile and to inspire where needed.

As an aside, my friend Mark and I were in line together. His iPhone has a slight grey spot on the view and he needs to swap his out, as well. These aren’t minor inconveniences, either.

They’re major pains, and even if it’s just a few out of the million-plus sold so far, it’s me, it stings, and it’s a bear to deal with AT&T CSRs take out their stresses on the consumers (I was hung up on twice when I asked for a supervisor because I felt I wasn’t being listened to–this resulted in me getting an unasked-for $25 credit today when there was a follow-up).

By: Cindy Stanford

Cindy Stanford — Mon, 14 Jul 2008 18:33:15 +0000

So? What did you end up doing? Update, plz!

By: napper

napper — Thu, 10 Jul 2008 12:01:53 +0000

sorry about your troubles with the iphone sir. i too am joining brad in going iPhoneless as the cost to switch over is just too steep. The thing that bugs me the most about this whole iphone issue is that it is so anti-apple. the apple brand always seemed to be about loyalty to the apple. if you purchased their hardware it worked. you weren’t constricted by software or environments. when a windows box couldn’t open a file, a mac could. Macs could network windows machines much sooner than a windows networks accepted macs. sure itunes has their drm format but itunes allows you to convert that to non-drm, in typical apple fashion. now apple has hooked up with ma bell (the original microsoft) and created a device that locks you into one system and the tyranny of their dictators. apple loyalists are used to working around the system but now it appears that their fav brand is becoming THE MAN. i’m actually considering the iPodTouch as it will give me everything except for the phone piece. with my DSL going ATT i can hook into wifi hotspots just like all the iphone dudes and have my contacts etc all hooked up. i can keep my lofi uscell phone and be happy with that. i dunno, just thinking out loud. [ok, enough cliches for one post].

By: Wisetechie

Wisetechie — Wed, 02 Jul 2008 17:35:47 +0000

I live in India where we were all dependant on unlocked Iphones till now, atleast we could ask someone to bring one from USA, but now it seems dismal, as there is a huge plan termination fee

By: Brad

Brad — Wed, 02 Jul 2008 16:53:55 +0000

It’s not going to happen. Since they are covering more of the cost of the phones, this is how they are making it up.

So far the best I have read is to buy it outright and not extend contract for another 2-years. Also, it appears to be cheaper way to go compared to the low price + 2-year contract.

Either way, I will be iPhoneless, but maybe I will pick up an old model and use it on my t-mobile.

By: michael leis

michael leis — Tue, 01 Jul 2008 23:30:49 +0000

great post. And thanks for calling them. We’re having a very similar situation in our household, so my hope is that with folks like you writing about it, at&t will simplify the process before the eleventh. Although if they don’t, someone else will create a usable solution (read: hack).

So maybe this is the dawn of a new era of iPhone hacks now that the sdk is about to go live: hacking at&t customer service process