Tempted by an iPhone, but just looked at the costs with O2 and it’s much pricier than I thought.

Any tips on how to get the cost down? Anyone bought an unlocked one?

keep your existing phone and buy a touch?

I’ve had my iPhone for about a month (paid up Apple Fan Boy 🙂 ). Its excellent for the web and some of the apps are superb, but its reset itself twice (needed to be plugged into iTunes to correct) and the battery life is not great. The concept is light years ahead of the competition though.

Work for a company that has O2 as there mobile provider – I get 33% discount on the line rental, so will be getting one shortly!

Just bought one and I must say I’m very impressed but there are faults not least the poor battery life. Went for £35 per month contract plus £150 for the phone

Get an iTouch and keep your phone.

Of course the battery is struggling when the public demands a wafer thin phone and expects days of life out of the battery while the phone is running its GPS, 3G, WiFi, iPod et al. All those those things kill the battery. I had an N95 before my iPhone, and just about every function is much much better on the iPhone, the camera on the N95 is almost impossible to focus, the GPS won’t lock; I had to buy a BT receiver to use mine properly, and the standard battery on the Nokia is worse than the iPhone. I bought a higher capacity battery for mine, but then the SIM kept losing contact. Unless the public accept bigger phones so that higher capacity batteries can be fitted then shorter run times have be expected if you want to use power-hungry functions. Nano-wire battery technology isn’t in production yet to allow small high power batteries. Get over it.
For what it does, and what it costs, the iPhone is a marvelous piece of kit. Try buying a SIM-free Nokia and see what it costs you. IIRC the N95 was around £450, and frankly it sucks compared to the functionality of the iPhone. My ONLY critism is lack of Flash (blame Adobe), and cut-and-paste. I certainly couldn’t browse this forum and write answers like this on the Nokia, and definitly not on the awful XDA Mini that preceded it. For the £30 a month this thing costs me it’s worth every single penny for all the useful apps, as an ebook reader, (have you seen how much one of those costs in Waterstones?), and for Internet use there’s little to touch it to functionality.

I ordered a PAYG iphone yesterday. It’s got it’s faults but from the brief play’s i’ve had, it’s streaks ahead of win mobile phones. The only downside is that it looks a pain in the arse to write apps for if you don’t have a mac. I thought about waiting longer for prices to drop, but it crossed my mind with the current weakness of the pound, it might even become more expensive.

Turn your 3G off unless you need it and lower your screen brightness by a couple of clicks. That improves battery life considerably.

I certainly couldn’t browse this forum and write answers like this on the Nokia, and definitly not on the awful XDA Mini that preceded it

I can browse this forum on my Nokia 6230i, it’s definitely possible on an N95

I have an n95, the battery life on it’s good once you update the firmware, it was shocking pre update!

I just bought the wifey a 30gb iTouch for her birthday (he has an old samsung mobile) and I’m dead impressed with it, so much so I think I’ll get myself one!

it does: all her photos (from our iphoto, that +3500 images!) about 20gb of music & video, full and fast web browsing, email, facebook, ebay and now she’s going metal over eBooks, there’s thousands of them free (major titles!)

Its also half the thickness of the iPhone, twice the capacity and I think that I read somewhere that there’s VoIP calling also available?!?

yep, I think I’m sold on one of them.

and its a wretched ball ache to do any kind of browsing on the n95, even with opera.

the n95 is best for calls, random snaps & sport tracker

The lack of bluetooth on the iPhone (It connects to a headset and that’s it!) is crap. The camera is crap! The ;lack of MMS is crap! But I still love mine and my £45/month contract for everything is way cheaper than I was paying on my Vodafone contract before this.

Anyway.. The Camera is crap but just a challenge..

So I set this up.. 🙂

http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=44954558364

Needs some more pics tho 🙂

The Darkroom app helps the camera in low light – it can detect camera shake and picks the right moment to press the shutter for you so the pics aren’t (quite so) blurry.

I’ve had my 3G iPhone since day 1 in July and it’s great. The contract price isn’t too bad if you use a reasonable amount of calls, texts and data. It includes wifi access on BT Openzone and thecloud too.

Battery life not a big issue – if you use it like a non-smartphone (ie. calls and texts) it lasts ages. Of course, regular use of 3G and wifi with heavy-duty apps on a big, bright screen will deplete the battery fairly fast.

There’s PAYG, but the upfront cost is quite steep. Hopefully now that there’s an unlock for the 3G one it will get secondhand prices (especially of the first, non-3G, iPhone) down a bit.

Or as said, if you just want the apps, music, video, wifi browsing stuff then get a Touch – they’ve been revised a couple of times so cheap ones often available from the apple refurb store or secondhand.

Look at the Samsung Tocco I was sceptical however I love it now! a “cheaper” version of the i phone without quite so many natty gadgets but I’m on O2 and get it for £25 a month! mega peanuts and loads of people are always asking me how I get it so cheap!

i got a Nokia E71 for the keypad and the web……never use it for anything other than calls but it was free and costs me £20 a month

Been playing with people at works iphones, as nice as they are and they are fun, seems an awful expensive phone with a load of crap i’ll never use. Just me though, i don’t really need to check my facebook every ten minutes or laugh at Ninja Cat on YouTube (its been a long week)

Great piece of kit (using it now) but it’s big and crap for txting.

iphone all the way 16 gig £150.00 £35.00 a month ,

I’ve had an iPhone for the past 2 months after 10+ years with Nokia ones. Despite it’s shortcoming (agree with Mark’s list – also would like turn by turn GPS)I wouldn’t swap it.

turn push email off and it makes a dramatic improvement to the battery life.

Had my 3g since August and I love it, in fact the novelty still hasn’t worn off.

Turn off searching for WiFi.

had 4 vario’s and two xdaIII’s

Never had one that didn’t break and be replaced for new before the 12month warranty ran out.
And loads of resets and time on phone to returns and technical teams at t-mobile.

Despite the shortcomings mentioned above, the iphone is SO much better to navigate and just use.
With a mac and it’s applications plus mobile me, it’s all works really well.

so another iphone/apple/convert “fanboy”, cue the cutting comments and death threats.