Apple will not allow Verizon to preload software on iPhone
appleinsider.com
appleinsider.com
I love using the Nexus One with its pure Google-Android experience. I have yet to upgrade to Nexus S.
The AT&T iPhone has been a disappointment for international travel. The international data plan is a terrible deal, and it seems to be impossible to carrier unlock without also jailbreaking. Jailbreak is not a great option if you're an app developer as the jailbreak ties the phone to a specific OS version, and you generally want the latest, or even a beta OS installed. If you want to use local SIMs, your only real option is to buy a phone factory unlocked from somewhere like Singapore. If you know of a way to carrier unlock without jailbreaking, let me know!
Even if you get an unlocked phone, you will most likely only be able to get a voice+text SIM card when traveling. Especially in Europe, only full blown plans included any amount of data. And every damn country requires a new SIM. Absolutely painful and honestly not that valuable. You might just gain ever so slightly cheaper calls and texts to local phones, and absolutely nothing if you want to call back home.
Verizon Global phones, on the other hand, are amazing. AMAZING! You pay $80 per month for unlimited data. Yes, UNLIMITED international data. And Verizon will prorate your fees for only the days that you travel and also discount you the cost of your existing data plan during these days. Otherwise it is the same as AT&T, but this is a HUGE difference.
If you travel and want to use data then Verizon is the way to go. You just need a Global phone, and unfortunately the iPhone isn't one of them.
Phone calls are $1.29 a minute, and texts are $0.29 or $0.99 I haven't checked my bill yet.
Either way roaming is very expensive on T-Mobile. I am not sure why, T-Mobile owns the network I was on in The Netherlands as well!
This is totally untrue. I traveled to England last year with my Nexus One, bought a T-Mobile SIM card, and got unlimited data for a week for something absurd like £1 ($1.50) a day, after paying for the $20 SIM.
I would welcome more countries adding a plan like the one you described. But so far that's the only one I've seen.
By comparison the Verizon plan supports over 200 countries. You just go (after enabling Global Roaming, of course) and your phone recognizes the new towers automatically. You don't have to buy a new SIM card, hope this country's carrier has some kind of non-outrageous data plan, and so on.
I think SIM switching is works best for people who move to one place for reasonably long periods of time and know a decent number of local people they want to call/text. For example I know a few people who are from Taiwan who go back for a few months at a time to visit family. Getting a local SIM for those few months is really nice. But getting a SIM for France for a week then another SIM for Spain for three days and another SIM for Italy for a week. That's just a pain in the ass.
Check this wiki, it has a list of prepaid SIM cards that have internet packages for all European countries and more: http://prepaid-wireless-internet-access.wetpaint.com/
In Spain all providers have prepaid SIM's and you can use the credit on data. The best option right now for a short stay is to get a SIM card at the supermarket from carrefour (which is also a mobile operator) and pay 1 euro per day for unlimited data (there's a minimum of 3e per month).
You pay 10 euros for the SIM preloaded with 10 euros so you can connect a whole week cheaply at 100mb/day (after that speed is reduced to 128k)
It'e sasier for operators to not have to deal with contracts and billing and just deal with self-service through supermarkets and hole-in-the-wall cellular shops selling phones, sims, and refill cards than it is to deal with contracts and billing...
I haven't seen great deals, but all of the carriers in Australia now offer some sort of prepaid mobile data.
Cheapest:
#1 Hong Kong
#2 Singapore
#3 Canada
#4 Switzerland
Looks like the all the iPhones have the same radios. So, if an unlocked iPhone doesn't work on 3G with your current carrier (i.e. T-Mobile in the US), then you won't be able to find an iPhone anywhere that does.
From the Apple site (I verified with the top 4 cheapest countries):
* 3G Support: UMTS/HSDPA/HSUPA (850, 900, 1900, 2100 MHz)
* 2G Support: GSM/EDGE (850, 900, 1800, 1900 MHz)
I just meant that at least, being a GSM phone, the capability is available. I didn't even realize Verizon had global phones -- how does that work? Are they dual band CDMA / GSM? -- so thank you for sharing this with me. Time to rescind that entire last clause of what I wrote it looks like. :)
Would edit that previous post but I guess after a certain time edits are not possible(?).
Specifically: Amazon MP3, Twitter, and Facebook.
As for as default Facebook installation and integration is a bad idea. I really hate that.
I _did_ however do a hard reset the other day (ugh...) and all of my stuff was gone. Twitter, Amazon, and Angry Birds Holiday seemed to still be there...
But looking at my phone now, a bunch of other apps that I had downloaded are back, mysteriously. I dunno.
http://support.twitter.com/groups/34-mobile/topics/125-troub...
At least I would use 2 of those 3.
I wouldn't use Amazon mp3 nor facebook, so, meh.
Notes is okay - but I prefer simplenote.
I also don't use the contacts app (you can get at contacts through the Phone icon) but I understand that people might want to use it.
Amazon MP3, Facebook apps are tied to some services that requires user accounts.
One pre-installed app on iOS that fit the category is YouTube App.
So now that there are installable apps, they can be removed, right? No they can't.
Yes, this could (and should) be fixed. And someday, perhaps, it will be. For now, it's just not a serious problem, outside of Hacker News.
Having three different IM clients on a phone pre-installed and unremovable? Yeah, that's the kind of shit Apple doesn't do.
Because Apple wants you to use SMS instead of IM, making the carriers a boatload of money for no reason.
That is exactly the kind of shit Apple does.
I bought my first mobile over twelve years ago because of SMS, not voice, as it replaced the pagers that me and my friends had.
Apple's SMS implementation/interface is terrible. Group Messaging is just broken.
http://www.appbrain.com/app/titanium-backup-%E2%98%85-root/c...
With all the creepiness, and clinginess, that implies. In their warped, MBA, boardroom bullshit philosophy, uninstallable apps are essential to that goal.
No I doubt an informed user would say that. But a non-technical user might. And they get money for that.
I wish, instead of horning into the user experience with bullshit, they'd spend their time embracing their core competency: network infrastructure deployment and maintenance. And really do it with gusto – be the best they possibly can be. This would breed loyalty. This would create enthusiasm in consumers for the carriers they pay.
But who am I kidding – it's much easier to license NASCAR and shove that trash into a feature phone.
Would you stand for it if your water company tried to lock you into it's service by offering to make all your water "minty fresh"? I think not.
I guess this is my minimalist hatred of useless tangential/unrelated features talking.
Despite having a different chipset and radio, the Verizon iPhone is still just another iPhone and Verizon still just one of several dozen carrier partners around the world. If they didn't allow any other carriers to preload software, why would they let Verizon?
Personally I would go for offering some kind of "opt in" that says you know what you're doing and willing to worry about it yourself for people who feel constrained (personally, despite being a developer myself, I would never "opt in". I don't have time to worry about if an app is going to cause trouble or not).
Similar answer with duplicate stores. The thing is, when people have a bad experience because of some stupid app they installed they often aren't technical enough to say "darn that mypic.exe! It screwed my computer". Instead they say "why did my iphone break! What a peace of crap". If you don't believe me, go look up what the actual source for most blue screens were on windows. Who got the bad rap for it? Bill Gates didn't seem to be bothered by it too much but I think being the richest man in the world but having that rep would be the same thing as utter failure to Steve Jobs.
I let my nephew play with my phone for about 15 minutes one afternoon and a month later I get a bill for "Need for Speed". Turns out he opened NFS and pressed a single button to play the full version.
Another way to hide the apps it to use Launcher Pro.
The carriers should really stay out of the software side - less spending for them, clean experience for users and let the manufacturers do what they know best. If the OHA members just stood up for themselves and convince the carriers, I can easily see it happening.
In a way T-Mo has taken the right direction for G2, hopefully each manufacturer offers at least one clean experience phone per carrier.
Deciding to kill a source of revenue, whether it's more appealing to the consumer or not, becomes harder to justify when that source of revenue is paying off creditors and funding new development.
As far as crapware goes - yeah it might be ad like revenue but I can't imagine it's a major part of revenue for carriers - they can mitigate it by charging little more for the clean experience models.
See also: extended warranties.
The ads on Google's result page bring in about 75% of their revenue. If it's like that for telecos and crapware, they no wonder they don't want to lose it.
What PC manufacturers do this? I can't think of a single mainstream one, though maybe I'm just uninformed.
The reason small PC manufacturers can do this is because there's simply more of them, since the barriers to entry are much smaller than setting up a wireless network.
Will it be free or an extra $20 per month like Verizon's other phones? There seems to be confusion on this point.