Huh? I have been to 3 other countries within the last two years and it will be 4 by the end of this year. I bought my current phone from a girl in the UK. She had been to at least 6 different countries within 18 months. She forgot to delete the photos from the phone before parting with it and they were date stamped. There were some 'interesting' shots she really should have deleted first - no, make that would wish she had deleted.
At some point in the future, people are going to look back and shake their heads wondering were they really silly enough to buy an iPhone. The greed inherent in Apples demand for a slice of the coms traffic is really something to behold. I would like data rates to get a lot cheaper in Europe, as they are in the US and Japan, not more expensive!
The carriers who carry the iPhone are certainly not going to be keen to reduce their charges if they have to give Apple a slice of the pie.
Apples model will fall apart in time, I think. So maybe they are just grabbing as much as they can before people and the carriers wake up to having being conned. Surely they won't be able to get the carriers to agree to do the same for future simplified and cheaper models, there is just too much competition.
I really can't get my head around this. How far would Apple get if they tried to demand a share of broadband connection charges for the computers they sold - mad!
The Biggest question has to be however is that if they have signed T-Mobile in Germany why the hell have they not signed T-Mobile in the UK???
Yeah it's interesting that they're using different carriers in each country.
Also, Apple is currently in trouble for not letting the UK iTunes sell to German customers (etc)... how does this affect Apple's sales of iPhones in UK/Germany etc?
I've just been looking up these 3 carriers.
* Telefonica/O2 is the incumbent in Spain, and has networks in Spain, UK (where it bought the incumbent's mobile network), Germany, Ireland, & Czech Republic. It also covers most of South America & Mexico. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Movistar)
* Orange is the incumbent in France, and has networks in France, UK, Spain, Belgium, the Netherlands, Switzerland, Austria, Poland, Slovakia, and Romania. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orange_SA). It also has many networks in Africa and the Caribbean.
* T-Mobile is the incumbent in Germany, and has networks in Germany, UK, The Netherland, Czech, Slovakia, Montenegro, Macedonia (& part shares in Croatia, Hungary, & Poland). It also is in the US of course.
So each of these networks has an interest beyond the initially rumoured country - and this could be part of Apple's plan. I wouldn't be surprised if part of any deal with Apple either includes future roll outs for each company to other countries, or is exclusive for a very limited time after which they can each expand anywhere they want in Europe (hard luck for Portugal, Italy, & Greece).
Hmm... This is going to be expensive... In Norway, I'm paying exactly zero for my phone plan. Yes, zero. After 120 minutes and 90 SMS, I'm paying $0.10 a minute and $0.07 each SMS, and that's it. No monthly costs, no lock-in period and no subscription fee. The data price, however, is rather expensive, at $0.84 per MB. But still, I doubt Apple can match this...
with MMS you take a photo pick a contact and press send, it then compresses that photo automatically to a small size and instantly it appears in ANYONES inbox.
Just as easy with the iPhone. Take a pic, send s email, except that the receiver gets a decent image in their inbox.
With as much as people complain about EDGE being oldhhat tech, you;d think people would cheer Apple for supporting better tech and not an outdated and flawed tech like MMS. I'd prefer to see manufacturers add real email to their phones instead of Apple dumb down the iPhone's software to support MMS.
Quote:
Originally Posted by ToMiKoN
Nice, but what will Apple do in the other country's? Belgium, The Netherlands, Denmark, Sweden ... ? Also Simlock is forbidden in Belgium, so will they pick a partner there?
Oh yeah, I live in Belgium and I travel a lot to other EU country's! The Netherlands, France are just a half our drive away.
If your country doesn't allow for locking of phones then youa re screwed.
Quote:
Originally Posted by cnocbui
I really can't get my head around this. How far would Apple get if they tried to demand a share of broadband connection charges for the computers they sold - mad!
If each broadband carrier used different NICs to connect that were only available from the broadband company then your analogy would make sense.
Quote:
Originally Posted by GregAlexander
Yeah it's interesting that they're using different carriers in each country.
Also, Apple is currently in trouble for not letting the UK iTunes sell to German customers (etc)... how does this affect Apple's sales of iPhones in UK/Germany etc?
That is not Apple's fault. What does Apple care about who buys an iTunes track? This limitation is coming from the record companies.
Just as easy with the iPhone. Take a pic, send s email, except that the receiver gets a decent image in their inbox.
With as much as people complain about EDGE being oldhhat tech, you;d think people would cheer Apple for supporting better tech and not an outdated and flawed tech like MMS. I'd prefer to see manufacturers add real email to their phones instead of Apple dumb down the iPhone's software to support MMS.
How is MMS outdated and flawed? How is email not outdated and flawed? Only old people use email.
How is MMS outdated and flawed? How is email not outdated and flawed? Only old people use email.
Oh Jeff. How I pity you....
Only numpties use MMS. Most networks have a cap on how large an MMS can be... It's expensive, and you can't exactly send an MMS to Old Aunt Matilda in Australia now.
Emails are cheap, have much greater support than MMS, Wi-Fi is now common across most cities allowing for cheap push email, the iPhone comes with yahoo push email also, and even my 6 year old Sony Ericsson T68 had email support.
Get with the programme.... MMS has always been flawed and expensive.... And is a nightmare to send across borders
All three of those carriers operate in the UK yet it seems from the above we'll be stuck with the crap one - O2 - with the highest charges, worst coverage and no EDGE at all, unlike the other two.
The O2 website doesn't even work properly with Safari and their shop throws certificate errors. It's down for maintenance now apparently. Terrible.
Seems like an odd choice for Apple to take - pick the least iPhone compatible service.
Sadly, business is business. Apple is no different from any other company, they are looking for the best deal for themselves. If that happens to coincide with our needs, then great.
Only numpties use MMS. Most networks have a cap on how large an MMS can be... It's expensive, and you can't exactly send an MMS to Old Aunt Matilda in Australia now.
Emails are cheap, have much greater support than MMS, Wi-Fi is now common across most cities allowing for cheap push email, the iPhone comes with yahoo push email also, and even my 6 year old Sony Ericsson T68 had email support.
Get with the programme.... MMS has always been flawed and expensive.... And is a nightmare to send across borders
I've read the discussions about MMS vs e-mail. The ease of use and the immediate receiving is still very appealing to most consumers.
It's indeed really interesting to see apple has signed telcom's everywhere who are lagging behind and see the iphone more as a marketing tool to earn a bigger piece of cake. Telcom's are using data services to get more revenue but are not succesfull doing it (3G data services are still not popular in EU, most people just use the amount they get for free and don't bother afterwards). iPhone brings both data revenue and NEW costumers.
As the iPhone is a SIM-phone it will be open to all carriers some day, let's hope it's not 2 years in EU.
Just as easy with the iPhone. Take a pic, send s email, except that the receiver gets a decent image in their inbox.
I was talking about sending photo's to friends phones, how would emailing a full resolution picture to a mate on a GPRS phone be cheaper than MMS? (Most tariffs include an amount of included MMS now) Like i said MMS automatically scales down the photo for best quality on a small screen and therefore much lower bandwidth and therefore much lower cost. Remember if you email a high res image to someone on a GPRS phone they will be paying for the bandwidth!! I am sure they will love you when they get their bill.
Quote:
With as much as people complain about EDGE being oldhhat tech, you;d think people would cheer Apple for supporting better tech and not an outdated and flawed tech like MMS. I'd prefer to see manufacturers add real email to their phones instead of Apple dumb down the iPhone's software to support MMS..
Loads of phones from the likes of Sony and Nokia have included "proper" email clients for years, i had a sony 5 years ago that had a POP3 email client. But people never use them, why? Because SMS and MMS are easier and quicker to use.
MMS is actually a newer technology than email - so how is it outdated?
Quote:
Originally Posted by Woggledog
Oh Jeff. How I pity you....
Only numpties use MMS. Most networks have a cap on how large an MMS can be... It's expensive, and you can't exactly send an MMS to Old Aunt Matilda in Australia now.
I live in Australia and sometimes send an MMS to my mates in England!
Before we got to Aus some mates were travelling Asia and were sending me photographs by MMS from India, Hong Kong and Indonesia.
Quote:
Emails are cheap, have much greater support than MMS, Wi-Fi is now common across most cities allowing for cheap push email, the iPhone comes with yahoo push email also, and even my 6 year old Sony Ericsson T68 had email support.
Right, when did this turn into an MMS vs email debate?, this is typical of these forums, the whole idea behind the minds of Apple fans is that is you like one thing it means you cannot like another thing. MMS and email can both be used and have certain applications that each is better for.
I was talking about the lack of MMS being harmful for UK sales, email cannot take the place of MMS in one big area, the ability to quickly and easily send a low resolution photograph you have just taken to your friends mobile phones. Your friends will be on different networks, using different devices, some will be on Wifi, some on 3G other will be on GPRS. There is nothing better that MMS to do this. As i have said loads of phones have supported POP3 email for years but nobody ever uses it, the reason why is because MMS works, this is called market forces folks, the market always decides what is good and what it not.
in the UK MMS is cheap now, you get bundles with MMS's thrown in, it is a very popular application and better than email because you are not sending message via 2 different networks AND two different email providers and their servers just 2 different networks. It is "Push" technology so people get their photographs as soon as they are sent, POP3 email is not "push" technology.
I do not mind a good argument, but cannot stand it when the people involved just spout out any old rubbish with no thought or facts behind what they are saying at all. I am not slagging email for god sake i must write a 100 a day and i am not slagging off Apple, so why you are being so defensive is beyond me.
If you cannot understand that MMS is better for sending photographs to other phones then you clearly have not thought about it too well.
If you want to know anything about mobile phones in the western word then listen to the Europeans, it was the Europeans who led the way with commercial mobile phone usage. The major players in handset and network design were Nokia, Ericsson and Siemens. We were all using mobile phones years before it took off in the US, we were also the first ones to go sms crazy (poor networks in the US held you lot up) and led the way in MMS and 3G.
Japan were doing their own thing and still way ahead of the US, But in the west it was the Euro's, so it may pay to actually listen to how the Europeans use their mobile phones and just becasue it is not what you do do not dismiss it out of hand.
Remember Apple helped create the home computer market, they helped define the rules. But in the mobile phone market they are a very small player and have joined the party very late.
O2 website works fine for me Safari. When I got my contract (on-line via safari) O2 were by far the cheapest for what I wanted. The deals change all the time. Vodafone had the worst customer servce & orange the worst coverage (in my area)
Try the O2 website with Internet Explorer on Windows - compare it to Safari and Firefox.
The deals change all the time but what hasn't changed is it's still £45 a month for unlimited data on GPRS or 3G and no EDGE at all. Their coverage is the worst for the entire UK - good for you it works in your area.
I'm on both Vodafone and Orange. IME Vodafone's service has been great, Orange terrible. I used to be on Cellnet before it became O2 and it was good when I lived in the south but terrible in the north of England.
Quote:
Originally Posted by cnocbui
At some point in the future, people are going to look back and shake their heads wondering were they really silly enough to buy an iPhone. The greed inherent in Apples demand for a slice of the coms traffic is really something to behold. I would like data rates to get a lot cheaper in Europe, as they are in the US and Japan, not more expensive!
The carriers who carry the iPhone are certainly not going to be keen to reduce their charges if they have to give Apple a slice of the pie.
Huh? The point of the Apple plan seems to be that the carriers don't subsidise the handset so potentially the carriers are getting a better deal out of this. eg. The Nokia N95 is about £500 but most carriers subsidise it down to £100-200 so the carrier is essentially giving away £300-400 to Nokia.
Apple's plan seems to be to sell at full retail but claw back what would otherwise be subsidy 10% at a time over the months from the carrier. So, with say a typical £35 plan, it'll claw back £84 over two years. IMHO, that sounds like a good deal for the carriers.
It could also potentially lead to reduced call/data charges I guess if the carrier passes on the difference between the £300-400 and £84 it would usually cost. That may even be part of the conditions Apple have placed on carriers to ensure the iPhones success - cheaper plans at the expense of subsidies. I'll believe it when I see it though.
Quote:
Originally Posted by cnocbui
Apples model will fall apart in time, I think. So maybe they are just grabbing as much as they can before people and the carriers wake up to having being conned. Surely they won't be able to get the carriers to agree to do the same for future simplified and cheaper models, there is just too much competition.
See above. There's less room for manoeuvre on cheaper models of course.
Quote:
Originally Posted by cnocbui
I really can't get my head around this. How far would Apple get if they tried to demand a share of broadband connection charges for the computers they sold - mad!
If you got cheap broadband as part of the deal, that might be quite good although 'cheap broadband' is often a lot more limiting than it's worth.
However, I don't think it's a bad thing if Apple are trying to break the heavily subsidised mobile phone market in Europe. We treat them as disposable here because of the low low price, unlike the US, and pick up new phones like fashion items. There must be mountains of discarded mobile phones building up. Perhaps if people actually paid the true cost of a phone, they'd think twice about discarding them so readily.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Woggledog
Only numpties use MMS. Most networks have a cap on how large an MMS can be... It's expensive, and you can't exactly send an MMS to Old Aunt Matilda in Australia now.
Huh? You can, and she's more likely to have MMS than email, which is the entire point.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Woggledog
Emails are cheap, have much greater support than MMS, Wi-Fi is now common across most cities allowing for cheap push email, the iPhone comes with yahoo push email also, and even my 6 year old Sony Ericsson T68 had email support.
Get with the programme.... MMS has always been flawed and expensive.... And is a nightmare to send across borders
Not push email it (T68) didn't and it also didn't support pictures in email.
You could say the same thing about email v SMS and be just as wrong. People use SMS and MMS because it's convenient, fast and ubiquitous. They don't use it because it's cheap or technologically better.
And yes, it works across national borders.
Quote:
Originally Posted by melgross
Sadly, business is business. Apple is no different from any other company, they are looking for the best deal for themselves. If that happens to coincide with our needs, then great.
I know, but what happened to putting the user first which allegedly is an Apple credo. Picking a carrier with no EDGE support, expensive data plans and a poor web portal isn't doing that. It's like the Motorola RCKR phone all over again.
However, we've so many of these reports about which carrier Apple has signed that until it's confirmed in a press release, who knows what Apple or the carriers are doing.
It could be all hunky dory on release - O2 upgrading all their masts to support EDGE, the iPhone adding 3G a decent camera and MMS, O2 catching up with the other companies and adding unlimited data for £7.50 a month instead of £45.
If not there's always the SE P1i which has just come out and fixes most of the issues I had with the P990.
So apparently it will be O2 in the UK, T-Mobile in Germany, and Orange in France.
With regards to O2, they have (allegedly) reasonable 3G coverage (not that the first iPhone will have 3G), but they have zero HSDPA support and have no plans to even add it in the future (unlike Vodafone and T-Mobile who already have HSDPA support, and Orange who have announced they will be adding it).
This sucks, or more accurately 3G sucks, HSDPA is orders of magnitude better.
My company just dumped O2 because of their sucky data network and moved to Vodafone who not only have HSDPA now but have also started rolling out HSUPA as well.
Looking at the three countries in Europe that get the iPhone first, and those that do not (e.g. Italy), a thought occurs to me. As other readers may be aware, some countries in Europe allow phones to be locked to a specific network (like the iPhone in the US is locked to AT&T), while other countries in Europe do not allow this. I may be wrong but I believe the UK, France and Germany all allow the phone to be locked to a network (certainly so in the UK), whereas Italy I believe does not allow this. I wonder if this is the real reason why some European countries are not getting the iPhone yet? Without being able to offer exclusivity to a network (by locking the phone to their network), Apple cannot in return demand their 10% cut of revenues.
Looking at the three countries in Europe that get the iPhone first, and those that do not (e.g. Italy), a thought occurs to me. As other readers may be aware, some countries in Europe allow phones to be locked to a specific network (like the iPhone in the US is locked to AT&T), while other countries in Europe do not allow this. I may be wrong but I believe the UK, France and Germany all allow the phone to be locked to a network (certainly so in the UK), whereas Italy I believe does not allow this. I wonder if this is the real reason why some European countries are not getting the iPhone yet? Without being able to offer exclusivity to a network (by locking the phone to their network), Apple cannot in return demand their 10% cut of revenues.
Still if you change from one iPhone selling carrier to another you won't be able to use the voice mail feature etc. because it needs special servers connected to your cell provider. You could use it to surf the web on edge and phone but no visual voice mail!
Still if you change from one iPhone selling carrier to another you won't be able to use the voice mail feature etc. because it needs special servers connected to your cell provider. You could use it to surf the web on edge and phone but no visual voice mail!
Visual voice mail is a nice idea, but I don't think it's a must-have as most of these arguments seem to suggest. I would be fine with that limitation if I felt I had to jump carriers.
Visual voice mail is a nice idea, but I don't think it's a must-have as most of these arguments seem to suggest. I would be fine with that limitation if I felt I had to jump carriers.
Maybe they will go without the extra features in the small European countries. Hell maybe they will just sell it in the apple/phone stores and don't tie them to anyone.
Maybe they will go without the extra features in the small European countries. Hell maybe they will just sell it in the apple/phone stores and don't tie them to anyone.
Wishfull thinking...
Selling it unsubsidised AND locked to a carrier would seem to be pretty bullish of Apple and unheard of in the UK if not Europe.
But then Apple has the balls to sell AppleTV in Europe too with no TV/movie content so reason doesn't necessarily follow with Apple in Europe.
My experience of 02 was that they were great... until you had to speak to them. They gave me far and away the worst customer service I have ever received in my life, they just didn't seem to care about their customers.
I'm sure most people have horror stories about their own networks but suffice to say they were bad enough to stop me buying an iPhone on their network, as much as I would like one.
I'd love an iPhone - does O2 do a web-n-walk service like T-mobile? If they don't then Apple and O2 can whistle ain't no way I'm paying per megabyte.
And no 3G is also a deal breaker - Jobs needs to get out of the valley into the real world where everywhere isn't bathed in the latest free wireless connections.
The problem with the iPhone is Apple are too busy trying to showboat their way into the cell phone industry to care about customers - so I'm sure they'll be right at home with all the other sharks that run this money grabbing operation.
roll on EU rules about roaming - its the same deal as when operators used to charge 40p a minute to call another operator.
So looks like it'll be me and my awful MDA Vario II until well into 2008
Comments
Huh? I have been to 3 other countries within the last two years and it will be 4 by the end of this year. I bought my current phone from a girl in the UK. She had been to at least 6 different countries within 18 months. She forgot to delete the photos from the phone before parting with it and they were date stamped. There were some 'interesting' shots she really should have deleted first - no, make that would wish she had deleted.
SHOW US PLEASE.....
At some point in the future, people are going to look back and shake their heads wondering were they really silly enough to buy an iPhone. The greed inherent in Apples demand for a slice of the coms traffic is really something to behold. I would like data rates to get a lot cheaper in Europe, as they are in the US and Japan, not more expensive!
The carriers who carry the iPhone are certainly not going to be keen to reduce their charges if they have to give Apple a slice of the pie.
Apples model will fall apart in time, I think. So maybe they are just grabbing as much as they can before people and the carriers wake up to having being conned. Surely they won't be able to get the carriers to agree to do the same for future simplified and cheaper models, there is just too much competition.
I really can't get my head around this. How far would Apple get if they tried to demand a share of broadband connection charges for the computers they sold - mad!
You have this completely arse about face.
If you don't want it, don't buy it.
The Biggest question has to be however is that if they have signed T-Mobile in Germany why the hell have they not signed T-Mobile in the UK???
Yeah it's interesting that they're using different carriers in each country.
Also, Apple is currently in trouble for not letting the UK iTunes sell to German customers (etc)... how does this affect Apple's sales of iPhones in UK/Germany etc?
I've just been looking up these 3 carriers.
* Telefonica/O2 is the incumbent in Spain, and has networks in Spain, UK (where it bought the incumbent's mobile network), Germany, Ireland, & Czech Republic. It also covers most of South America & Mexico. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Movistar)
* Orange is the incumbent in France, and has networks in France, UK, Spain, Belgium, the Netherlands, Switzerland, Austria, Poland, Slovakia, and Romania. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orange_SA). It also has many networks in Africa and the Caribbean.
* T-Mobile is the incumbent in Germany, and has networks in Germany, UK, The Netherland, Czech, Slovakia, Montenegro, Macedonia (& part shares in Croatia, Hungary, & Poland). It also is in the US of course.
So each of these networks has an interest beyond the initially rumoured country - and this could be part of Apple's plan. I wouldn't be surprised if part of any deal with Apple either includes future roll outs for each company to other countries, or is exclusive for a very limited time after which they can each expand anywhere they want in Europe (hard luck for Portugal, Italy, & Greece).
email is not MMS.
with MMS you take a photo pick a contact and press send, it then compresses that photo automatically to a small size and instantly it appears in ANYONES inbox.
Just as easy with the iPhone. Take a pic, send s email, except that the receiver gets a decent image in their inbox.
With as much as people complain about EDGE being oldhhat tech, you;d think people would cheer Apple for supporting better tech and not an outdated and flawed tech like MMS. I'd prefer to see manufacturers add real email to their phones instead of Apple dumb down the iPhone's software to support MMS.
Nice, but what will Apple do in the other country's? Belgium, The Netherlands, Denmark, Sweden ... ? Also Simlock is forbidden in Belgium, so will they pick a partner there?
Oh yeah, I live in Belgium and I travel a lot to other EU country's! The Netherlands, France are just a half our drive away.
If your country doesn't allow for locking of phones then youa re screwed.
I really can't get my head around this. How far would Apple get if they tried to demand a share of broadband connection charges for the computers they sold - mad!
If each broadband carrier used different NICs to connect that were only available from the broadband company then your analogy would make sense.
Yeah it's interesting that they're using different carriers in each country.
Also, Apple is currently in trouble for not letting the UK iTunes sell to German customers (etc)... how does this affect Apple's sales of iPhones in UK/Germany etc?
That is not Apple's fault. What does Apple care about who buys an iTunes track? This limitation is coming from the record companies.
That is not Apple's fault. What does Apple care about who buys an iTunes track? This limitation is coming from the record companies.
You miss my point completely. I'm asking whether the exclusive iPhone contracts could have similar legal issues (no matter whose fault it is)
Just as easy with the iPhone. Take a pic, send s email, except that the receiver gets a decent image in their inbox.
With as much as people complain about EDGE being oldhhat tech, you;d think people would cheer Apple for supporting better tech and not an outdated and flawed tech like MMS. I'd prefer to see manufacturers add real email to their phones instead of Apple dumb down the iPhone's software to support MMS.
How is MMS outdated and flawed? How is email not outdated and flawed? Only old people use email.
How is MMS outdated and flawed? How is email not outdated and flawed? Only old people use email.
Oh Jeff. How I pity you....
Only numpties use MMS. Most networks have a cap on how large an MMS can be... It's expensive, and you can't exactly send an MMS to Old Aunt Matilda in Australia now.
Emails are cheap, have much greater support than MMS, Wi-Fi is now common across most cities allowing for cheap push email, the iPhone comes with yahoo push email also, and even my 6 year old Sony Ericsson T68 had email support.
Get with the programme.... MMS has always been flawed and expensive.... And is a nightmare to send across borders
Noooooooooooooo!
All three of those carriers operate in the UK yet it seems from the above we'll be stuck with the crap one - O2 - with the highest charges, worst coverage and no EDGE at all, unlike the other two.
The O2 website doesn't even work properly with Safari and their shop throws certificate errors. It's down for maintenance now apparently. Terrible.
Seems like an odd choice for Apple to take - pick the least iPhone compatible service.
Sadly, business is business. Apple is no different from any other company, they are looking for the best deal for themselves. If that happens to coincide with our needs, then great.
Oh Jeff. How I pity you....
Only numpties use MMS. Most networks have a cap on how large an MMS can be... It's expensive, and you can't exactly send an MMS to Old Aunt Matilda in Australia now.
Emails are cheap, have much greater support than MMS, Wi-Fi is now common across most cities allowing for cheap push email, the iPhone comes with yahoo push email also, and even my 6 year old Sony Ericsson T68 had email support.
Get with the programme.... MMS has always been flawed and expensive.... And is a nightmare to send across borders
MMS is the same price as SMS over here!
I've read the discussions about MMS vs e-mail. The ease of use and the immediate receiving is still very appealing to most consumers.
It's indeed really interesting to see apple has signed telcom's everywhere who are lagging behind and see the iphone more as a marketing tool to earn a bigger piece of cake. Telcom's are using data services to get more revenue but are not succesfull doing it (3G data services are still not popular in EU, most people just use the amount they get for free and don't bother afterwards). iPhone brings both data revenue and NEW costumers.
As the iPhone is a SIM-phone it will be open to all carriers some day, let's hope it's not 2 years in EU.
Just as easy with the iPhone. Take a pic, send s email, except that the receiver gets a decent image in their inbox.
I was talking about sending photo's to friends phones, how would emailing a full resolution picture to a mate on a GPRS phone be cheaper than MMS? (Most tariffs include an amount of included MMS now) Like i said MMS automatically scales down the photo for best quality on a small screen and therefore much lower bandwidth and therefore much lower cost. Remember if you email a high res image to someone on a GPRS phone they will be paying for the bandwidth!! I am sure they will love you when they get their bill.
With as much as people complain about EDGE being oldhhat tech, you;d think people would cheer Apple for supporting better tech and not an outdated and flawed tech like MMS. I'd prefer to see manufacturers add real email to their phones instead of Apple dumb down the iPhone's software to support MMS..
Loads of phones from the likes of Sony and Nokia have included "proper" email clients for years, i had a sony 5 years ago that had a POP3 email client. But people never use them, why? Because SMS and MMS are easier and quicker to use.
MMS is actually a newer technology than email - so how is it outdated?
Oh Jeff. How I pity you....
Only numpties use MMS. Most networks have a cap on how large an MMS can be... It's expensive, and you can't exactly send an MMS to Old Aunt Matilda in Australia now.
I live in Australia and sometimes send an MMS to my mates in England!
Before we got to Aus some mates were travelling Asia and were sending me photographs by MMS from India, Hong Kong and Indonesia.
Emails are cheap, have much greater support than MMS, Wi-Fi is now common across most cities allowing for cheap push email, the iPhone comes with yahoo push email also, and even my 6 year old Sony Ericsson T68 had email support.
Right, when did this turn into an MMS vs email debate?, this is typical of these forums, the whole idea behind the minds of Apple fans is that is you like one thing it means you cannot like another thing. MMS and email can both be used and have certain applications that each is better for.
I was talking about the lack of MMS being harmful for UK sales, email cannot take the place of MMS in one big area, the ability to quickly and easily send a low resolution photograph you have just taken to your friends mobile phones. Your friends will be on different networks, using different devices, some will be on Wifi, some on 3G other will be on GPRS. There is nothing better that MMS to do this. As i have said loads of phones have supported POP3 email for years but nobody ever uses it, the reason why is because MMS works, this is called market forces folks, the market always decides what is good and what it not.
in the UK MMS is cheap now, you get bundles with MMS's thrown in, it is a very popular application and better than email because you are not sending message via 2 different networks AND two different email providers and their servers just 2 different networks. It is "Push" technology so people get their photographs as soon as they are sent, POP3 email is not "push" technology.
I do not mind a good argument, but cannot stand it when the people involved just spout out any old rubbish with no thought or facts behind what they are saying at all. I am not slagging email for god sake i must write a 100 a day and i am not slagging off Apple, so why you are being so defensive is beyond me.
If you cannot understand that MMS is better for sending photographs to other phones then you clearly have not thought about it too well.
If you want to know anything about mobile phones in the western word then listen to the Europeans, it was the Europeans who led the way with commercial mobile phone usage. The major players in handset and network design were Nokia, Ericsson and Siemens. We were all using mobile phones years before it took off in the US, we were also the first ones to go sms crazy (poor networks in the US held you lot up) and led the way in MMS and 3G.
Japan were doing their own thing and still way ahead of the US, But in the west it was the Euro's, so it may pay to actually listen to how the Europeans use their mobile phones and just becasue it is not what you do do not dismiss it out of hand.
Remember Apple helped create the home computer market, they helped define the rules. But in the mobile phone market they are a very small player and have joined the party very late.
O2 website works fine for me Safari. When I got my contract (on-line via safari) O2 were by far the cheapest for what I wanted. The deals change all the time. Vodafone had the worst customer servce & orange the worst coverage (in my area)
Try the O2 website with Internet Explorer on Windows - compare it to Safari and Firefox.
The deals change all the time but what hasn't changed is it's still £45 a month for unlimited data on GPRS or 3G and no EDGE at all. Their coverage is the worst for the entire UK - good for you it works in your area.
I'm on both Vodafone and Orange. IME Vodafone's service has been great, Orange terrible. I used to be on Cellnet before it became O2 and it was good when I lived in the south but terrible in the north of England.
At some point in the future, people are going to look back and shake their heads wondering were they really silly enough to buy an iPhone. The greed inherent in Apples demand for a slice of the coms traffic is really something to behold. I would like data rates to get a lot cheaper in Europe, as they are in the US and Japan, not more expensive!
The carriers who carry the iPhone are certainly not going to be keen to reduce their charges if they have to give Apple a slice of the pie.
Huh? The point of the Apple plan seems to be that the carriers don't subsidise the handset so potentially the carriers are getting a better deal out of this. eg. The Nokia N95 is about £500 but most carriers subsidise it down to £100-200 so the carrier is essentially giving away £300-400 to Nokia.
Apple's plan seems to be to sell at full retail but claw back what would otherwise be subsidy 10% at a time over the months from the carrier. So, with say a typical £35 plan, it'll claw back £84 over two years. IMHO, that sounds like a good deal for the carriers.
It could also potentially lead to reduced call/data charges I guess if the carrier passes on the difference between the £300-400 and £84 it would usually cost. That may even be part of the conditions Apple have placed on carriers to ensure the iPhones success - cheaper plans at the expense of subsidies. I'll believe it when I see it though.
Apples model will fall apart in time, I think. So maybe they are just grabbing as much as they can before people and the carriers wake up to having being conned. Surely they won't be able to get the carriers to agree to do the same for future simplified and cheaper models, there is just too much competition.
See above. There's less room for manoeuvre on cheaper models of course.
I really can't get my head around this. How far would Apple get if they tried to demand a share of broadband connection charges for the computers they sold - mad!
If you got cheap broadband as part of the deal, that might be quite good although 'cheap broadband' is often a lot more limiting than it's worth.
However, I don't think it's a bad thing if Apple are trying to break the heavily subsidised mobile phone market in Europe. We treat them as disposable here because of the low low price, unlike the US, and pick up new phones like fashion items. There must be mountains of discarded mobile phones building up. Perhaps if people actually paid the true cost of a phone, they'd think twice about discarding them so readily.
Only numpties use MMS. Most networks have a cap on how large an MMS can be... It's expensive, and you can't exactly send an MMS to Old Aunt Matilda in Australia now.
Huh? You can, and she's more likely to have MMS than email, which is the entire point.
Emails are cheap, have much greater support than MMS, Wi-Fi is now common across most cities allowing for cheap push email, the iPhone comes with yahoo push email also, and even my 6 year old Sony Ericsson T68 had email support.
Get with the programme.... MMS has always been flawed and expensive.... And is a nightmare to send across borders
Not push email it (T68) didn't and it also didn't support pictures in email.
You could say the same thing about email v SMS and be just as wrong. People use SMS and MMS because it's convenient, fast and ubiquitous. They don't use it because it's cheap or technologically better.
And yes, it works across national borders.
Sadly, business is business. Apple is no different from any other company, they are looking for the best deal for themselves. If that happens to coincide with our needs, then great.
I know, but what happened to putting the user first which allegedly is an Apple credo. Picking a carrier with no EDGE support, expensive data plans and a poor web portal isn't doing that. It's like the Motorola RCKR phone all over again.
However, we've so many of these reports about which carrier Apple has signed that until it's confirmed in a press release, who knows what Apple or the carriers are doing.
It could be all hunky dory on release - O2 upgrading all their masts to support EDGE, the iPhone adding 3G a decent camera and MMS, O2 catching up with the other companies and adding unlimited data for £7.50 a month instead of £45.
If not there's always the SE P1i which has just come out and fixes most of the issues I had with the P990.
With regards to O2, they have (allegedly) reasonable 3G coverage (not that the first iPhone will have 3G), but they have zero HSDPA support and have no plans to even add it in the future (unlike Vodafone and T-Mobile who already have HSDPA support, and Orange who have announced they will be adding it).
This sucks, or more accurately 3G sucks, HSDPA is orders of magnitude better.
My company just dumped O2 because of their sucky data network and moved to Vodafone who not only have HSDPA now but have also started rolling out HSUPA as well.
Looking at the three countries in Europe that get the iPhone first, and those that do not (e.g. Italy), a thought occurs to me. As other readers may be aware, some countries in Europe allow phones to be locked to a specific network (like the iPhone in the US is locked to AT&T), while other countries in Europe do not allow this. I may be wrong but I believe the UK, France and Germany all allow the phone to be locked to a network (certainly so in the UK), whereas Italy I believe does not allow this. I wonder if this is the real reason why some European countries are not getting the iPhone yet? Without being able to offer exclusivity to a network (by locking the phone to their network), Apple cannot in return demand their 10% cut of revenues.
Looking at the three countries in Europe that get the iPhone first, and those that do not (e.g. Italy), a thought occurs to me. As other readers may be aware, some countries in Europe allow phones to be locked to a specific network (like the iPhone in the US is locked to AT&T), while other countries in Europe do not allow this. I may be wrong but I believe the UK, France and Germany all allow the phone to be locked to a network (certainly so in the UK), whereas Italy I believe does not allow this. I wonder if this is the real reason why some European countries are not getting the iPhone yet? Without being able to offer exclusivity to a network (by locking the phone to their network), Apple cannot in return demand their 10% cut of revenues.
Still if you change from one iPhone selling carrier to another you won't be able to use the voice mail feature etc. because it needs special servers connected to your cell provider. You could use it to surf the web on edge and phone but no visual voice mail!
Still if you change from one iPhone selling carrier to another you won't be able to use the voice mail feature etc. because it needs special servers connected to your cell provider. You could use it to surf the web on edge and phone but no visual voice mail!
Visual voice mail is a nice idea, but I don't think it's a must-have as most of these arguments seem to suggest. I would be fine with that limitation if I felt I had to jump carriers.
Visual voice mail is a nice idea, but I don't think it's a must-have as most of these arguments seem to suggest. I would be fine with that limitation if I felt I had to jump carriers.
Maybe they will go without the extra features in the small European countries. Hell maybe they will just sell it in the apple/phone stores and don't tie them to anyone.
Wishfull thinking...
Maybe they will go without the extra features in the small European countries. Hell maybe they will just sell it in the apple/phone stores and don't tie them to anyone.
Wishfull thinking...
Selling it unsubsidised AND locked to a carrier would seem to be pretty bullish of Apple and unheard of in the UK if not Europe.
But then Apple has the balls to sell AppleTV in Europe too with no TV/movie content so reason doesn't necessarily follow with Apple in Europe.
I'm sure most people have horror stories about their own networks but suffice to say they were bad enough to stop me buying an iPhone on their network, as much as I would like one.
And no 3G is also a deal breaker - Jobs needs to get out of the valley into the real world where everywhere isn't bathed in the latest free wireless connections.
The problem with the iPhone is Apple are too busy trying to showboat their way into the cell phone industry to care about customers - so I'm sure they'll be right at home with all the other sharks that run this money grabbing operation.
roll on EU rules about roaming - its the same deal as when operators used to charge 40p a minute to call another operator.
So looks like it'll be me and my awful MDA Vario II until well into 2008