Where are we at on this? Are we really angry about Apple posts still, or what? I've been waiting for my iPhone for 3G. Does that make me a fanboi? A Kool-Aid drinker? I just want to which line to stand in.

3G? [shrug]

The way to reach the fanboi in me would be for Apple to somehow pay off ATT to set the iPhone free, or at least for ATT to add a pay-as-you-go plan option. I don't use a phone nearly enough to justify a 2-year, $60/month lock-in.

Have a look at Engadget (I'll link to the post in my signature) and think REALLY HARD about whether you want to let your current iPhone out of your hands...

If you don't want to use the phone, why not just buy an iPod Touch?

In the US at least, I don't see the point of "setting the iPhone free" from AT&T... why use the thing on TMobile at all? Or are there regional GSM providers that I've never heard of?

If the only thing the phone has is a little extra memory and 3G capabilities its not going to make much difference compared to the market power of allowing 3D party applications, a change which will effect all existing iPhones.

The reasoning is this-- 3G has always been minor issue for day-to-day use when Wi-Fi is so ubiquitous, and EDGE works perfectly fine for other locations. On the other hand, being able to run sophisticated code on one of the most powerful handheld platforms will unleash a wave of new capabilities.

The iPhone is the only Apple product I own, but having used this one for a year, I'll shell out for the 3G and the rumored GPS.

Assuming, that is, that the vaunted 3G packs a significant datarate performance superior to EDGE, which doesn't seem that hard to do. EDGE is s l o w.

Wi-Fi is far from ubiquitous, hate to burst your bubble on that. Hell, I live in Portland, where there's Metro Free Wi-Fi blanketing most of the city, and I'm almost always going over EDGE because I'm not getting strong enough coverage where I happen to be at the moment.

Every other city I've been in with the iPhone, yes Wi-Fi is "ubiquitous", meaning you're within range of more than one net, but nowadays FREE Wi-Fi is increasingly rare. My last trip to a major city I just turned Wi-Fi off entirely after 2 days of trying to connect only to land at pay-for-play pages, or otherwise secured networks.

That might be going away as well. The company has announced plans to shut it down if they can't find a buyer, and who would buy an incomplete network that's losing money? So, in Portland anyway, 3G is even more appealing.

3rd party apps will be nice too, assuming the offerings are good.

Well, I've had my Nokia N95 for eighteen months now, and I can assure all the Apple, ahem, 'early adopters', that 3G and GPS are great and well worth having and who knows, maybe you'll have them at some point. And a camera that's actually a camera, not a pinhole job. And digital TV. And third party apps and Skype and a provider plan that wasn't divised by Soviet planners and ... so on.

For those who prefer style and substance over rumour ... ooh, look at that sexy little number:

http://www.engadgetmobile.com/2008/02/11/the-nokia-n96-redefines-high-end/

There's no excuse for owning an iPhone, it's like wearing a dunce's cap.

If you don't want to use the phone, why not just buy an iPod Touch?

I didn't say I didn't want to use the phone. But my calling habits don't make even the "low"-end $60/month plan worthwhile.

I currently use a pay-as-you-go plan that averages roughly a third of that. If I can't do that with the iPhone, I probably will end up getting a Touch, 'cause I suspect some of the 3rd-party apps are going to be great.

It'd be nice to have that in one gadget instead of two, but for me it's not worth the $40/month Apple tax.

I prefer the iPhone to any device I've owned, which admittedly, hasn't been many. So maybe I'm wearing a techie dunce cap (bear in mind there are different types of intelligence - but that's a rant for another day.)

For techies who can't understand why the iPhone is popular with the unwashed masses, here it is - a tech idiot will break it down for you.

I used to have a different device, that actually had more features and better features than an iPhone. But everytime I tried to use one of them, the thing would hit me up for more cash. Use the GPS? need to pay more. Want to read a PDF that was attached to an e-mail? need to subscribe - and pay. The iPhone may not have the best features out there, but I can use every single one of them without paying more than a flat rate. A flat rate that's $20 cheaper a month than the starting rate for the other device (same carrier, btw).

Second reason - ability to view web pages. There's a lot of information on the web that's not available in the "mobile device" format. Now that's probably common knowledge for the technophile, but it wasn't disclosed before I purchased the other device. I got the other device and then found out the internet capability was so limited as to be useless. It was kind of a bait-n-switch situation.

Sure. Please bear in mind I'm an asshole, so I do occasionally express myself like an asshole.

The thing with the iPhone (and Apple in generally, but *that's* a rant for another day) is that it delivers the exact opposite of the hype. It's stylish ... but rubbish. European companies were putting out phones that could do everything the iPhone can (apart from the touch screen, admittedly) four or five years ago. You can connect your iPhone to your computer and upload a TV show and press the screen a couple of times and it loads and you can watch last night's TV ... well, the N95 lets you watch live digital TV. The *second* camera on the N95 is better than the one on the iPhone.

Apple fans always talk about 'potential' ... the iPhone *potentially* is brilliant, but the trick with all digital technology is letting the users play around with it, find out what it's good for. You can't do that with an iPhone, you can only do what Apple let you do.

Plus, the top-end Nokia phones are made in Finland and Germany and even the mass market ones are made in unionised factories in Azerbaijan by people with a vote and human rights. Whereas iPhones are made in Mordor by slaves, as discussed previously in this very column. Although Apple stuff does come in lovely packaging, so that's OK, then.