What to do?

Mikesound

Howayiz
I have two real questions.

Iphone vs BB vs anything else???
Where to buy?

Heres the story....
My contract is up today and my options are wide open, so....
I want to get either an iphone or blackberry because;
I work abroad quite regularly and could be away for days or weeks or months at a time so Skypeability is important. I would need a decent media player, camera and at least 4 gigs of file storage.
Web browsing over wi-fi would be slightly more important than email although looking at attachments like docs, xls and pdfs is important too.
I am heading towards the iphone as the apps and contracts look better but, I want to wait till after the "announcement" on june 7 to see if 8 and 16 gig 3g's fall in price with the introduction of OS 3.0(and 32 gig 3g).
As well, I'll be in the US twice in June, should I buy there???
Will I be able to use it here?
hence....
Iphone vs BB vs anything else???
Where to buy?

Thanks for your time...
Mike

whiterebel

I looked at them too. Not away foreign too much, but was missing emails while on the road around Ireland. For me, I was fed up with O2s attitude with the iPhone and wouldn't buy a 1st revision new product Apple product anyway. BB seemed to be very expensive to buy and run, unless it was the Storm, and that seemed to get some staggeringly bad reviews, and had no WIFI.
I had a look at the Nokia 5800 which is touchscreen, has built in WIFI, GPS, 8GB card included, FM radio, good music set up, calendar etc. Haven't used the camera much because I'm not overly bothered about it. Syncs perfectly with my Mac and really easy to use. Hadn't thought about Skype for it, so I'm not sure if there is a version. You know its really, really difficult to get an iPhone in the US without a US credit card, address and SS number, don't you?

Tom Dunne

Mikesound wrote: »

Skypeability is important. I would need a decent media player, camera and at least 4 gigs of file storage.

The only thing that sticks out there is the camera. It's all right for outdoor, daylight shots (it's a 2 Megapixel), but don't expect anything spectacular from it.

Mikesound wrote: »

Web browsing over wi-fi would be slightly more important than email although looking at attachments like docs, xls and pdfs is important too.

I don't think the iPhone supports Microsoft Office Apps out of the box, but it does support pdfs. Open to correction non that, I don't use mine to read Office docs.

Mikesound wrote: »

I am heading towards the iphone as the apps and contracts look better but, I want to wait till after the "announcement" on june 7 to see if 8 and 16 gig 3g's fall in price with the introduction of OS 3.0(and 32 gig 3g).

It is probable that the current models will drop in price, after the announcement.

Mikesound wrote: »

As well, I'll be in the US twice in June, should I buy there???
Will I be able to use it here?

You won't be able to purchase the iPhone in the US, unless you sign up for a 2 year contract. There was talk of AT&T doing some pre-pay phones, but my understanding was that there were some conditions around it that prevented non-AT&T customers from buying one. Still a bit cloudy, this one.

Even if you did buy the latest one over there, you would not be able to unlock it to work here, at least not yet.

Your best bet would be to go to Belgium or Italy, where it is illegal to sell locked phones. A number of people have done so with the current generation iPhones, and I will problably do that msyelf when the new model comes out.

As a side note, there is an Apple Media Devices forum, for all things iPhone related, but as you are looking for a comparison with the likes of the BB (or maybe even the Nokia 5800), I'll leave this thread here for now.

whiterebel

The iPhone is capable of reading Office documents.

SQDD

Hey Mike,

I'll blast my personal experience at you - iPhone all the way. I'm a long despiser of Apple but I can tell you that the iPhone is absolutely mint, you'll never want a different phone again. The online capabilities of it are unreal, it's like having google in you pocket plus it is a piece of cake to use.

I'm on the 45/month tarrif a month - absolute robbery but it's worth it once you get the use out of it. I use web radio on it the whole time (a downloadable app), use it to email (you can view all the attachments through the email app), the gps when looking for places and skype. Now you can actually use the skype over 3G which I do the whole time with great results, and another VOIP application, fring. I can call internationally for free which is the bees knees however to use Skype over 3G, you have to jailbreak you iPhone (Well worth doing for many reasons, you can read about em elsewhere!)

The music functionality is sterling and while I'm no fan of itunes, it does a damn fine job of updating all the podcasts (I'm hooked on them!), syncing photos on your pc and you contacts - which is insanely cool if use gmail and google calendar as it's a free cloud based service. 16Gigs should keep you ticking over on the music front.

Now you have had the pros, here are the cons:

Battery life is a joke, it's actually laughable. I use computers a lot so it's constantly plugged into a usb port. You'd be lucky to get a full day use out the thing! Forget about using it over a weekend without packing a charger.

The texting is also disaster central - you ain't going to be able to walk and text, you literally need to be seated in order to operate the damn texting but it is pretty quick - but you have to be careful when typing.

I've no experience on roaming but i hear that O2 are like catholic priests screaming bend over when it comes to raping people on call costs abroad. I'll put it this way - when I head off I plan to throw my sim card into a BB I have lying about as I'd be terrified that it'd make so many data connections that my bill'd be through the roof. I'll bring the phone along to with a PAYG sim so I can use skype / VOIP / browsing over wifi.

Hope that's useful to you!

Any Qs let me know

SQDD

Further note: I changed from Meteor to O2 to get the phone. I thought meteor were a bunch of tossers until I changed, O2 are the most rediculous company I've had dealings with - before you could check your remaining minutes, now - I'm not joking - there's no way to check.

Seeing as the iPhone is a flagship phone for them, you'd think that when you log onto their website there'd be a special iphone compatable one for ease of use - not at all! It's the fugly regular one.

Finally, not having unlimited texts is a farce seeing as PAYG customers get em and when you get your phone first ,they keep sending you messages on how to top up, it's also very predominant after you log onto your BILL account, they seem to be quite the retards for mixing up their customer base.
ie. When I log in, the options I have are more or less:
How do I top up
Where can I top up
Click here to top up online
Click here to back up my sim card contacts (ugh, the point of syncing your contacts on the iphone is so you don't have to back em up!)

So yeah, nice phone but O2 = boneheads!

Tom Dunne

SQDD wrote: »

Battery life is a joke, it's actually laughable. I use computers a lot so it's constantly plugged into a usb port. You'd be lucky to get a full day use out the thing! Forget about using it over a weekend without packing a charger.

I wouldn't agree.

If you turn down the screen brightness, turn off WiFi and Bluetooth and one or two other things, you should get two days out of it (should point out that I am on a 1st Gen iPhone, but other 3G iPhone users have reported improvements on battery life when they make such changes).

SQDD wrote: »

The texting is also disaster central - you ain't going to be able to walk and text, you literally need to be seated in order to operate the damn texting but it is pretty quick - but you have to be careful when typing.

I think it's a personal preference. Some like it, some loath it (much like the iPhone itself, really ).

SQDD wrote: »

I've no experience on roaming but i hear that O2 are like catholic priests screaming bend over when it comes to raping people on call costs abroad

Mrs. Dunne is on O2 (not the iPhone, mind you) and she travels abroad a bit. I wouldn't say call costs are that expensive.

Dankoozy

get a decent Nokia E-series phone

the VoiP client on those things is infinitely better than skype could ever hope for.

SQDD

Tom Dunne wrote: »

If you turn down the screen brightness, turn off WiFi and Bluetooth and one or two other things, you should get two days out of it (should point out that I am on a 1st Gen iPhone, but other 3G iPhone users have reported improvements on battery life when they make such changes).

I've never used BT, and keep the Wifi off and it's still brutal! I don't turn it off at night as you need to keep it on for the alarm to work (I didn't know that 1st day I had it!)

Regarding roaming charges, 56c/min and E5/Mb ain't cheap!

It's 27c to receive a call, Meteor PAYG is only 20c!

Did a quick google and came across: http://www.lesliegilmour.com/o2-iphone-rip-off/

The iphone is a data phone, we are being shafted if we use it as a data phone when abroad, that's all I'm saying!

I meant to add that my previous phone was the E65 and while it had similar features, they didn't work with the same ease that the iPhones do. The email is shocking on the E series compared to the iPhone