I currently have an AT&T plan with unlimited text and internet usage. I had been using the HTC 8525 and it is a POS. It has become useless, locking up and having to take the battery out daily, doesn't write to the card 80% of the time, keyboard types slow and inputs most button pushes as two characters instead of just one. So i am thinking of getting either a blackberry or an iphone. I am leaning towards the blackberry more, but either way, will I have to change my plan to use either of these phones?

 

It depends on what and where you buy it from. If you buy it from the store at the discounted price, then you will have to re-up your contract. From what I know, the new iphone plans are more or less the same data plans that ATT offers, but you have to select the $30 data plan which comes with no text messages...which means a minimum of $70/mo with no text messages. Blackberry plans are different (and usually cheaper by a couple bucks, but I haven't shopped in awhile so that may have changed)...yo have to get a blackberry specific plan for blackberry devices. Last BB plan I had was about $70/mo but included 200 text messages and unlimited data/email.

The other choice is to buy either without contract (which costs more than with a contract) or buy a used non-blackberry phone or a jailbroken 1G iphone, or another phone that would work with the current plan you have.

I know it sucks they keep changing these plans around to nickel-and-dime you out of your money (especially the new iphone plan with NO text messages), but there are ways around it. What saves you more money or what are you more comfortable with...sticking with this plan and paying more for a phone, or paying less for a phone for a more expensive contract?

 

Well I do not want to pay more then what I am currently paying. With the phone I had, I basically had one of the best plans I could get, although my minutes were not that much, which is fine as i use it more for texting and email. I do not want to pay a huge amount of money for a phone, but could pay a couple hundred. I would rather buy a used phone. It really bothers me that I would have to extend my plan, yet again, to get a new phone. The one i already have doesn't work, and all they will do is offer the same phone that once again will have the same issues.

 

you technically dont' have to extend your plan to get a new phone from ATT, but you'd have to pay full price for the phone rather than the subsidized price, and your current plan wouldn't work with blackberries or the iphone even if you did want to pay the full price.

But usually buying a lightly used phone on ebay or somewhere is usually cheaper than buying an unsubsidized phone from the provider.

I can think of a couple other options depending on your situation. If your device is still under warranty, you might be able to get it replaced by ATT. The other option is depending on how long you've been in your contract, you can break your contract (I think ATT is prorating the termination fee now so it'll hurt less) and jump ship to another provider with better plans and sell your current phone to pay off the termination fee.

I did this when I had a blackberry with cingular...T-mo came out with the pearl and I had only just started my contract ($70/mo i think) with ATT. I got the ATT blackberry at a discounted price ($250 w/ 2 year contract if i recall), so I sold it for $250 after a month of use. I got the Pearl for free and got the minutes&mail plan at t-mo for $60/mo which has unlimited data and texts and 1000 minutes (no nights or weekends). I never go over 500min per month anyway. I ran the numbers over the contract period and I would actually come out ahead at the end of 2 years, even with the $175 cingular termination fee (I saved $10/mo, or $120/yr which meant I was breaking even at 1 year, 8 months).

I have a friend that has his original plan from cingular from back in 2002 or 2003...he's only on his 2nd phone (the 2 yr old razr i gave him after i got the blackberry), and he doesn't want to change his plan because he's only paying something like $20/mo for 600 minutes on this plan. I'm surprised ATT hasn't just said they aren't making his plan available anymore, but I guess the T&C's back then weren't as "rapist" as they are now, so they have to provide the same plan as long as he keeps paying.

 

Def. get a warranty replacement for the phone, even if you don't keep it (might as well make some money). If your not eligible for an upgrade (I assume not) you're going to drop $399 for iphone, $350 after $100 MIR on Curve. Your price point on your plan will not change, AT&T's data plans are the same price on iPhone/BBerry/PDA. You should almost never have to change your voice plan.

tl;dr No.

EDIT: If you buy iPhone 3G for $399 you WILL have to resign for 2 years, if you buy a curve for $350 after $100 MIR you do NOT have to resign for 2 years.

 

maybe you didn't understand the gist of what he wants...

The current data plans offered are more costly than his current plan, and he does not want to give up his current plan of unlimited text and data. It is true he will have to resign for 2 years if he gets an iphone, but he must ALSO get the new data plan, and the minimum plan does not include text messages. If he gets an unsubsidized blackberry, he must ALSO get a new plan because he has to get a blackberry specific plan. He may not have to renew a contract to get this, but he will still lose his current plan which sounds much better than the plans that are offered now.

 

What price plan do you have for data/text Audi? I just assumed that he was talking about a grandfathered voice plan, not data.

 

honesty, if i were in your shoes and didn't want to lose my current voice/data/txt plan, I would get a used iphone and jailbreak it or get a jailbroken one. That way you can use your data/text without having to stick with the ridiculous plans that ATT makes you choose from when buying an iphone. unfortunatley you won't be able to get a 3g iphone.

Considering you are with ATT, you may not even have to jail break a used iphone to use it...I'm not sure but do some research into it.

 

He would, if you just pop an AT&T Sim in there you get nothing, not even calls. ziphone.org, takes a whole 4 mins to unlock 2G iphone. In which case you would not have to change anything for sure.

 

there you go! And considering the extra stuff you can do with a jailbroken iphone, if I had one with a legit plan, I would still jail break it while giving an imaginary finger to steve jobs!

 

Except you should be that finger to AT&T. Jobs is all about open to the public, This is the guy who has been pioneering DRM FREE music. Its not his choice to put all these stipulations on things. Its just the deals that get worked out to actually make these products available to us though.

 

I'm a little confused by a couple of the responses. If I do get a jailbroken iphone, I do not have to change anything on my plan, and still have the ability to use the unlimited text and data plans I currently have?

 

Uh, sure...

is that a monkey flying out of my ass?

 

supposedly, yes. I hear people on different providers are using the iphone (t-mo or any other GSM provider) after it's been jailbroken.

 

You want to be ignorant be my guest.

 

I'm not ignorant. Steve Jobs is a freakin' nazi, and if YOU want to be ignorant, then be my guest, since I'm basing my opinions on ACTIONS and DECISIONS by Apple/Jobs, not what you or anyone else says.

Is it not true that the ATT exclusive deal required ATT to pay APPLE a fee per month for selling the iphone? Uh, if good ol' Steve wanted the iphone to be so "public" as you say, then he wouldn't have wanted ATT to pay them, but would rather sell the iphone to all OTHER carriers that it would work on, such as T-mo. and this was also the reason they still have not struck a deal yet in China...Apple's insistence on revenue sharing! If they wanted to be "public" as you so bluntly put it, then how much more "public" can you get than offering the iphone to a billion chinese without worrying about that little bit you get per month?

Is it also not true that Apple takes great pains to keep OSX on APPLE ONLY hardware, rather than making it capable of running on 3rd party machines? How "public" of them for making OSX available to the millions of people out there who can't afford to pay top dollar for Apple hardware! Even the license agreement that no one reads stipulates this! You buy a piece of software and you are not allowed to run it on any other machine without violating the license agreement, even you made it possible?

These are only 2 of the MANY examples I have of Apple being a bunch of nazis. Apple/Jobs wants control over the distribution, the software development, etc. Even when it comes to music and itunes, Steve does a GREAT job of supporting DRM by working out deals with these companies. What, I can only port my music to another machine 5 times unless I pay more for DRM free versions? If it's MY music, I can do what I want with it as many times as I want...and that's why I buy from completely DRM-FREE distributors like Amazon.com.

But if you want to think highly of Jobs and his cohorts and how great they are and how they want to be "public", then it is YOU who are the ignorant one. Apple/Jobs is worse than Microsoft/Gates ever was...the only difference is Jobs has people brainwashed to think that they can do no wrong.

 

If I was a hardware company I, too, would take great pains to keep my OS on my machines exclusively.

As for DRM...if he didnt agree to DRM then there would be no itunes store because no companies would have agreed. He posted a very open letter a while ago with his thoughts on being anti-DRM.

But lets face it, he is running a business. THe game is profit is it not. And so you start where you can and work your way to where you want to be if possible. Hell itunes lost NBC...why,they didnt want to UP the prices to the public. They wanted to stay with a controlled pricing structure...making it cheaper to the consumer in the long run.

The original deal with AT&T brought apple tons of profit, more then a private company would have normally made licensing a product to a cell company. And I'm sure apple got all the profit up front for that and couldnt have cared if the iphones were jailbroken. A sale of an iphone to a tmobile customer intent on hacking is another sale period.

Now, AT&T has made more of a traditional deal with the prices being subsidized BY AT&T...and they dont want to lose out on money, so they want to try and control the phones and sign ups this time around. And does apple have to be apart of this? Yes. Why, because they are doing business with the company and you don't want to create bad blood.

No company is perfect. And Jobs is far from being a "good" person. But I respect him greatly as a business man and an innovator. And his tight control within Apple is why their products JUST WORK out of the box. Its why apples market share keeps growing every quarter.

Say what you want, but people are in the business of making money. And if you have to give up some control to get what you want out there, then so be it. Because of that, Jobs has been able to do things like get DRM free content on his store.

I wouldnt even be shocked to find apple had something to do with jailbreaking the phone, but that is info that would never come to light.

So, as I said be ignorant. You only look on the surface.

 

Yeah, this contradicts your statement that Apple wants to be "open to the public".


And why hasn't Apple done away with DRM if Jobs is so "anti-DRM"? Especially considering how much money the record industry makes through Apple, they can go DRM free right now. But then this would let people off the hook of needing to use an ipod to listen to their music. Yeah, so locking people into needing an ipod if they want to buy from itunes...that's very "open to the public".


I'm not arguing that they make good business decisions and strategies...I'm arguing that Apple is a bunch of control freaks and Nazis. This strategy makes them a successful company, but that does NOT change the fact that they are still control freaks and nazis, and are NOT "open to the public" as you say.

I guess people can't have their own opinions without the apple-fanboys making personal attacks to defend their god. Go pray to your god somewhere else...he's not here.

 

well at least you got me to laugh...even if its your expense.

As for DRM...studios want it, consumers dont. You have to get the studios to agree to provide DRM free media before you can actually sell it. Its really not that hard of a concept, and I already talked about it before.

 

Uh, Apple OFFERS DRM-free music, and so does Amazon. Further, last time I looked more and more distributors are going DRM-free, but I haven't heard of any distributors going the opposite way. If it's not that hard of a concept, then why does DRM free music exist if it the studios don't agree? Because they HAVE agreed to it.

further, I love how you defend that Apple and Jobs is "all about open to the public" by bringing up reasons why they're not, then defending why they're not open to the public. Hope you're not a lawyer or anyone that deals with reason or arguments, because you basically suck at it.

 

Their ideas on music and what not are for openess. I wasnt talking about their computers so lets not try and put words in my mouth.

Apple does offer DRM, ive stated that before also, you arent telling me anything new. And the other companies that are offering DRM free music made such deals with the studios (who still dont like the idea of DRM free music) and most likely havent made the same deals with apple because neither they nor apple cant come to terms.

Just because one business makes a deal, doesnt mean all the others will as well. Especially if they cant agree on the terms.

common sense, if only you could buy it at the store.

 

Couldn't you guys just discuss this in your own thread? I really just wanted some help with my situation, and not a debate or pissing contest.

 

You rang in with your "Apple is all about open to the public" while we were discussing the iphone, which is far from open (hence the term "jailbreak"), and only NOW do you specify that you were taking about music that Apple is "open" about...what does that have to do with a VERY CLOSED iphone marketing strategy? Your statement is that "Apple is all about open to the public"...just being open about a few things and being very closed about many many others is very far from "all" if you ask me.

The lack of reason inherent in your arguments is so ridiculous. I guess you only wish common sense was sold in stores (or in your case, an Apple store), then maybe you would have some.

Don't get me wrong, I like some apple products, I just don't like them all. And I definitely feel they are a very closed company when it comes to a lot of their offerings, but even if they are "open" when it comes to music, their actions definitely don't show it and it is far from "all" as you say.

And I forgive your backpedaling on the issue...I know how brainwashed you apple-fans are. But like I said before, your god is not here, so go worship somewhere else.



Back on topic: 2001AudiS4...just get an iphone and jailbreak it while giving the imaginary finger to sarlacc's god.