I Think Therefore I Won't iPhone (for now)

After much anticipation, the iPhone is expected to hit the the market next month, but already there is grumbling about its price and debate about whether it's worth it. (Photo courtesy of Apple.)

When Steve Jobs announced the iPhone (click to watch it) at Macworld, everyone went ga-ga, including I must admit myself. I posted no less than 4 entries the week of the announcement related to the iPhone. In a post today, Brian Chen at Macworld lists of all the reasons why he won't be buying an iPhone when it comes out next month, and according to Chen, a recent Macworld poll shows more than 50 percent of its readers will be joining him. In fact, Chen says, only 21 percent of those who responded to the survey were definitely buying one.

As much as I would love to try one for an afternoon (and you might have to pry it from my cold steely fingers to get it back), and as much as I believe it's a great concept and will be successful, I'm not ready to shell out $500 for a trendy new phone, no matter how cool it is. And even though I think some of Chen's reasons for not getting one are silly (i.e., he worries his whole life will be on the iPhone and what happens if he loses it; true of any PDA) or it will feed his internet addiction (isn't that the idea?), I can't disagree with his top reason: the price.

Maybe next year when my cell phone contract is up, and perhaps the price comes down, I will reconsider, but for now I'll just have to join the maddening crowd that has decided to wait.

So what about you? Will you be buying an iPhone or are you going to wait? Leave a comment and let me know.

Comments

[Robbie L.]

My girlfriend and I are each getting the 8GB version. I've had a treo for over a year and it's beat to crap, with a cracked screen now. Which means I can't even use the touch screen. My girlfriend has a POS sprint phone. We're both dying to get rid of them and have waited 4 months already for the iphone to come out so far so we're definitely getting it.

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Cool. Thanks for the comment. If you think about it, maybe you can come back and let me know how you like it (although I'm fairly confident you are going to love it).

Regards,
RM

[Bob Deitch]

Our company, TransMedia rendered the iPhone obsolete months ago via Glide mobile.

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I'm a big fan of Glide and Glide Mobile, Bob. And I agree you get a lot of the functionality without the price. Thanks for the comment.

Regards,
RM

[Bart Lee]

I'll be getting an 8GB on day one. I've had such a lousy time with RAZRs, Treos, and the like that I'm willing to pay a little more for a phone with the simplified, intuitive os that I'm confident Apple will deliver. I don't fault anyone for waiting, we all know 3G will come and the price will go down. The concern about losing all your information doesn't strike me as a valid one, though. All the information on the iPhone will be synced from a pc.
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Hi Bart:
Thanks for the comment. Sounds like valid reasoning to me. I expect it will be rock solid, and I agree completely about the syncing. This problem is true of any PDA. You have to back up your information regularly.

Thanks again for commenting.

Regards,
RM

[T.]

I'll be getting an 8GB iPhone the day it comes out.

I've been a 10 year Verizon customer, and my 2 year contract has been up for a few months, mainly a result of their phone offerings the the 18 months prior to the iPhone announcement being so poor that I didn't have any desire to exercise my "new every two years" phone discount option.

I love Motorola phones second only to the original Qualcomm phones for features and usability. But Verizon has removed the features I am willing to pay for in a better phone.

I'm particularly annoyed that Verizon crippled the bluetooth capabilities now that my macs have bluetooth. The fact that Verizon won't toggle on the 2 bits in the RAZR that would let it do the one ring style to fit all situations, "vibrate THEN ring" has kept me from upgrading my old phone.

And I'm hopeful that the iPhone will, for me, be a huge benefit in consolidating the devices I carry... a Palm T|X, an iPod Nano, and a cell phone. That's $299 for the Palm, $249 for the nano... which means the $599 iPhone costs me $51 for the phone, and the device consolidation is free.

I have absolutely no issues with the price, I'm willing to let them give me a feature rich phone for $51!

Granted, if you don't want a Palm or a Nano, then the phone's pretty darn expensive... but at least those are features you may find useful vs. Verizon's offerings of more expensive phones to take advantage of the features they hope to charge you extra for.

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As with any purchase decision, it depends on your needs and you obviously will benefit greatly from having all of these devices combined into a single integrated device. If you think about it, please stop back and let us know how well it works for you in practice.

Thanks for the detailed comments and for sharing your Verizon experiences and troubles.

Enjoy your iPhone!

Regards,
RM

[Tom]

I think cost depends on how you look at it. Certainly, the up-front expense of the iPhone can be an issue to some. But the fact is the _real_ cost of a smart phone is in the plan itself.

As you noted, let's say it's $85 a month. If I get the latest $199 Treo, I pay $2,239 for two years. With the $499 iPhone it's $2,539 for those same two years. That's $13 a month to have a phone I already know (from the demo) how to answer a second call when I'm on another, and how to conference the two.

Plus, I know (from iPod experience) that I just slap it in a cradle and it synchs everything. That's good to know. I think the iTunes connection to the iPhone is way underrated.

For me, I don't know if I want a smart phone enough to pay $85 a month for the plan. If I do, however, then the iPhone is a no-brainer.
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I like your thinking, but it all depends I suppose on what you need from a phone and what you're paying now. This clearly makes sense for your situation.

If you end up getting one, and you remember, check back and let us know how you like it and if your experience matches your expectations.

Enjoy your phone!

Regards,
RM

[Scott]

Luckily for me it's not a decision I'll have to make: Cingular isn't available in my county (GSM is only offered through Edge Wireless in my county and the coverage is near non-existent, CDMA coverage is excellent).

If it were available where I live, I'd have to wait until the 2nd or 3rd generation. $500 or $600 is just too expensive for me for a cell phone (besides, my 5G iPod has over 13GB on it now and don't even have all my videos on it yet, 8GB simply won't cut it).

Now, if there is a 30Gb $300 6G iPod in the works that's basically an iPhone without the phone, sign me up!
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In your situation, it clearly wouldn't make sense, but interestingly, so far of the half dozen people who have left comments, you are the first who isn't going to buy one.

The week of the iPhone announcement I wrote a blog entry speculating about the possibility of iPhone functionality and design showing up in iPods and it would make sense:

http://byronmiller.typepad.com/byronmiller/2007/01/will_iphone_ipo.html

Thanks for the comment and I expect Apple will be offering alternative types of coverage in the future, so maybe you'll get your iPhone yet.

Regards,
RM

[Dave]

Wife and I have been Nextel users for 9 years. Service lately sucks... up/down/up/down. Half the time I get message and it never rings... some messages get "delivered" a day late... text messaging with a normal telephone keypad is a joke.

Our two Nextel phones are beat, both ready to die. I just invested $50 each to tune 'em up to last for two more months. Can you believe my voice messages play ALL previously listened to messages BEFORE it let's me listen to a brand new message. Nextel: get a clue. Oh, the Nextel rep called a month ago to poll my satisfaction and "soft sell" me on all their work on fixing the many network problems.

Apple will kick butt in June. Phone companies, like music companies have vaccumed cash without regard to customer satisfaction. (Remember those $21 CDs before iTunes? Most had just ONE good song in the bunch!)

Thanks to Steve, I will get a better phone experience. And, you know, even if I pay more, I won't resent it as much as my time using the iPhone will be more productive.

And best of all: I don't have to rely on a crappy phone that "claims" to interface with a Mac... because the iPhone is a Mac (runs paired down OS X).

Apple stock by Sept will hit $125+.

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Thanks for the comment and for sharing your experience with Nextel. I hope AT&T treats you better. If not, at least you'll have a great phone. :)

Enjoy.

Regards,
RM

[Patrick]

Considering that you are out of contract, I'm not surprised that you are holding off on getting the phone. Paying a contract temrination fee or finding someone to take over your contract can be a major pain. My contract is not up; and I'm almost certainly getting an iphone when they come out. I really hope that in the couple weeks prior to the release, they give the iphone to a few responsible journalists so we can get a sense if we should wait or get it on the first round. Have you heard anything about how reviewing will work? It might work differently than apple's usual products, as we know the specs and we know that it will be released.
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I would love to be one of the journalist who gets to review one, but I'm afraid every technology journalist on the planet will be clamoring for one and only the likes of David Pogue of the NYT and Walt Mossberg of the WSJ and others of their ilk with a long reach are likely to get one. But I enjoy both writers and I'm sure that they along with the many Apple/Mac blogs will be on top of this and providing us with many different views about the iPhone.

As for getting one out of contract, I'm a Cingular/AT&T customer already, and I'm fairly sure they would allow me to upgrade for another two years of service from the day of purchase, but even if they would, I'm still not ready to shell out the bucks for one just yet.

Thanks for the comment.

Regards,
RM

[BillB]

Add me to the list of people buying the iPhone on the day its released. The price may be too steep for highschoolers, but there's a group of people aged 20-24, who have the money and could care less about"limitations" like lack of ability to open excel spreadsheets.

The "gadget geek" crowd is pretty well heeled and always ready to spend on the coolest toys.

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Hi Bill:
Thanks for the comment. I envy your youth and disposable cash. :)

Enjoy your new phone.

Regards,
RM

[xentricag04]

Will I buy an overpriced, brick-sized, vulnerable-screened box of hype that is already surpassed in durability, portability, and funcitonality by existing phones (check out the Motorola A1200, for example)? In a word, no.

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Thanks for your comments. You obviously don't think too much of Apple. I'm not sure you have characterized this correctly, but on one point, I agree. It's expensive, and that's why I'm holding off.

Thanks again for commenting.

Regards,
RM

[BillB]

Hey Ron...pretty significant typo on my earlier post. The ages should read 20-40. My age is at the end of that bracket. :)

I feel that there are a lot of tech oriented professionals throughout that age range who will be all over this thing.

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Yea, that's very different, Bill.! :)

And even over 40 I'm sure.

Thanks for clarifying that.

Regards,
RM

[cesman]

Expensive - compared to something functionally similar? Because there isn't anything functionally similar.

Expensive - compared to other phones in the same category (roughly)? Which phones? You don't say. The prada touch screen is more $$. The Nokia N95 isn't cheaper.

Expensive - as in not affordable for 10-12 million folks? Not really.

Expensive - as in not worth it? This is a hard argument to make - it's worth at least $250 for the iPod and most smartphones are $200 even with subsidies. It's prices fairly, for what it does and how it does it.

Expensive - as in you can't afford it? Or you want or need to spend your disposable $500 on something else? Sure. But I'm not sure what value that has. One person doesn't want to spend $500 on something. OK. Is that news? It's one person. There's also plenty of people that don't want to spend 50K on a BMW. So what? Do people post on the internet, saying BMWs are too trendy and expensive?
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Hi:
Thanks for the comment. I wasn't suggesting that it was too trendy or that other shouldn't buy it. I read this other post, which suggested a lot of people who are Apple users (readers of Macworld) were holding off. I posted that I was too. Do I think the phone is probably going to be good? Heck, yea. I'm only saying that for my money, I think it's better to wait until my contract is up and then reassess. I wasn't suggesting that everyone should do this, nor was I any way disparaging people who intend to buy it now.

If you getting one, more power to you, and enjoy!

Regards,