iPhone 3G? No thanks

Nobody mentioned the battery life? That's one of the real kickers for me. Particularly because you don't see it when your mate shows off the shiny screen and interface. But once you actually own one, and forget your charger at home when you're away on an overnight business trip or anything else along those lines, you are screwed. I don't want to plug my phone in more than three times a week, let alone more than once a day.
 
Yeah battery life is an issue. Personally I do not tend to make calls while I sleep so I just plug it in whenever I go to bed.
 
Aqua_lung said:
You have never owned an Apple product so this concept will come as a surprise to you but Apple does not allow anyone to sell their products for one main reason... service delivery, if you own anything Apple they want to be sure that when you call support the reseller knows what it's talking about and you are treated with the respect you deserve, another thing is that Apple needs to have a dedicated channel to receive/repair/replace faulty products and the customer won't be wondering why 6 months has passed and still no replacement.

Clue: Apple does not treat it's products like pavement specials and allow it's customers to be subjected to poor service.
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Some relevant points on support for the iPhone.

- The warranty is only 1 Year and not 2 years like with other mobiles.

- If your iPhone fails, it will get swapped out with a 'refurbished' unit and not repaired.

- The standard OOB failure procedure does not apply to iPhones. All failures are treated as 'in warranty' faults.
 
Rouxenator said:
Yeah battery life is an issue. Personally I do not tend to make calls while I sleep so I just plug it in whenever I go to bed.
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:rolleyes: rrreally.

and you clearly didn't read my post before grabbing the closest fanboy-packaged answer.
 
antonc said:
Nobody mentioned the battery life? That's one of the real kickers for me. Particularly because you don't see it when your mate shows off the shiny screen and interface. But once you actually own one, and forget your charger at home when you're away on an overnight business trip or anything else along those lines, you are screwed. I don't want to plug my phone in more than three times a week, let alone more than once a day.
Click to expand...

Any USB port will do, I've never used the wall socket charger to be honest.

After nearly a year of frequent iPhone use my battery does not seem weaker, I have not yet experienced a critical warning after a full days use.

*Just putting across my experience not defensive*
 
nah sorry...I use a digital camera for pictures, my ipod for music, my e50 for sms,msn and emails and prefer using a map over a gps (helps me to memorize the locations of a place faster). So I'm quite content with my pockets full of tech, and just find it more appropriate to use a specialized peripheral for a specific task. And don't see the point of running around with a device that only does an "acceptable" job with each of these. In my opinion it's is little more than an ipod with crappier battery life than my nano. So yes, as far as I'm concerned not worth it for me.
 
Aqua_lung said:
Any USB port will do, I've never used the wall socket charger to be honest.

After nearly a year of frequent iPhone use my battery does not seem weaker, I have not yet experienced a critical warning after a full days use.

*Just putting across my experience not defensive*
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That's cool :)

I'm not really looking for a debate about this. It's just that for me, and my lifestyle, it's a major hack and a big concern. If the iphone had a 3 day battery life as a minimum, it would probably change my whole point of view on it. As it is, I think it would piss me off too much to constantly have to worry about charging a gadget which is meant to make my life simpler, not more complicated.

But then again, I'm one of those guys who'd probably be quite happy with a black and white screen, as long as it was crisp, did my emails properly, had great signal and sound, and a 2 week battery life :D
 
vodacom3g said:
Some relevant points on support for the iPhone.

- The warranty is only 1 Year and not 2 years like with other mobiles.

- If your iPhone fails, it will get swapped out with a 'refurbished' unit and not repaired.

- The standard OOB failure procedure does not apply to iPhones. All failures are treated as 'in warranty' faults.
Click to expand...
From the above ‘support’ list, it is clear that something is amiss. “refurbished” is just another way of saying “previously used/abused and now repaired”. Who would justifiably support using ‘refurbished’ products? Would you use refurbished tyres on your vehicle? I wouldn’t.

Regardless, I’ve tried following the local iPhone release since the announcement and launch on 11th July 2008 with eagerness but I have to admit that as a longtime Vodacom customer, I’m extremely displeased and disappointed.

The fact that just because ‘the market can bear it’ smells of the Telkom protected monopoly way of doing things and despite Vodacom holding distribution rights to the iPhone, it just does not justify expecting the public to spend more than 3 TIMES the cost for the iPhone, especially with limited out-of-box functionality!

Case in point: Rand/Dollar exchange rate today = R8-30/$1
iPhone 3G 8GB = $199 = R1,651-70
Vodacom “Promotion” Prepaid iPhone 8GB = R6,389-00
Difference in cost = R4,737-30 (and I find it IMPOSSIBLE to accept that Import/Customs/SP markup amounts to more than TWICE the actual cost of the phone) PER UNIT.

In fact, unless Vodacom realizes this monumental blunder and takes effort to correct it, I have a good mind to switch to MTN when my Vodacom contract expires in March next year or even spend R7,400 on a Samsung Omnia / HTC Touch Diamond out of sheer principal than get myself an iPhone at these ridiculous prices.
 
*mutter*

How many times is this going to have to be repeated.....

the $199 pricetag that Apple mentioned is the cost IF one takes out a contract and go look at home much VC are charging for the phone-pay-in on contract... its not to far off that mark of $199. The Outright buy number is obviously much much higher.
 
Rouxenator said:
While some phones are branded they are available everywhere and in many cases unbranded as well.

That is not the case here - this is a setup where both companies gain a lot more out of the consumer. I am one for a open market and level playfield. The whole scheme just makes me feel uncomfortable and smells of anti-competitiveness.
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Have a look at this page.
http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1937

You'll notice that in some countries the iPhone is available from more than one network carrier, looks more like it depends on how open the carrier is and willing to put up with Apples standards.
 
vodacom3g said:
Some relevant points on support for the iPhone.


- If your iPhone fails, it will get swapped out with a 'refurbished' unit and not repaired.

- The standard OOB failure procedure does not apply to iPhones. All failures are treated as 'in warranty' faults.
Click to expand...
That is ridiculous. So what you are saying then is that the Iphone does not have a warranty? That to me is not a warranty. You would expect being such a large profitable company, they would look after their customers...I suppose this is more of the "screw the customer" policy of big business. :rolleyes:
 
Ag, screw it, I love my iPhone so much, for the 4G one I'm prepared to pay R10 000. :)
 
marine1 said:
That is ridiculous. So what you are saying then is that the Iphone does not have a warranty? That to me is not a warranty. You would expect being such a large profitable company, they would look after their customers...I suppose this is more of the "screw the customer" policy of big business. :rolleyes:
Click to expand...
Sounds better than a standard warranty to me - your device is swapped out for a working device (complete with a new battery) then and there. This is the same thing they do with the iPod.
 
ToxicBunny said:
*mutter*

How many times is this going to have to be repeated.....

the $199 pricetag that Apple mentioned is the cost IF one takes out a contract and go look at home much VC are charging for the phone-pay-in on contract... its not to far off that mark of $199. The Outright buy number is obviously much much higher.
Click to expand...

I wonder who is falling for the hype now? You could be correct, but then why do none of the review sites or simple web searches reveal the price is "conditional" on purchase of a contract?

Case in point: http://tech.yahoo.com/blogs/patterson/22479 with the following:
That said, it turns out the rumors of lower prices were true. A 16GB iPhone 3G will sell for $299, while the 8GB will go for $199. That sounds a lot better than $599 for the original 8GB iPhone.
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The original iPhone retailed from many local stores for around R7000+

Are you now suggesting that R599 x 8.3 = R4,971-70 was the 'buy-in' contract price if you took out a Contract? That's ridiculous :rolleyes:

It's more likely the hype and 'high demand, low supply' has perpetuated a situation where true to 'South African' form, products are priced higher in the local market in order to obtain higher profit in the short-term. Logistics / Import /Customs etc. are simply tools to obsfucate the public into accepting the higher cost.

Many products shipped to Australia should suffer similar logistical / transport issues yet products there are often still much cheaper than can be found here:
http://store.vodafone.com.au/iphone/ Compare Vodafone Australia pricing structure for the iPhone 3G - 8GB is even free on certain packages and buy-in costs are lower than Vodacom's "promotional" offering :(
 
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