Free Runner price vs iphone 3G price

Ortwin Regel ortwin at gmail.com
Tue Jun 10 20:38:30 CEST 2008


There are cheaper contracts if you don't get a phone with them in
Germany. No idea what the situation in the US is. (It's probably
godawful... :-/) Personally, I use a prepaid SIM card so I pay no
monthly fees at all. Much cheaper for me than any contract. So for me
the price advantage over an iPhone is very real.

Ortwin

On 6/10/08, ian douglas <ian.douglas at iandouglas.com> wrote:
> Robert Taylor wrote:
>> You pay through the nose for it because you HAVETO sign up for a 2 year
>> contract minimum.
>
> Granted, the Apple and AT&T partnership greatly subsidizes the cost,
> because of the $960 ($40/mo unlimited data plan for 2 yrs) to $2400
> ($100/mo unlimited voice/data for 2 yrs) that you'd spend with AT&T also
> helps cover the hidden cost of the hardware.
>
> And while I personally don't care much for the iPhone, you also have to
> sign up for a voice/data plan to use the Freerunner... You're still
> paying the $960-$2400 over two years, but there's not offset of cost of
> the hardware to the consumer. The monthly fees you pay that doesn't pay
> for the actual use of the cell network is 100% profit to AT&T instead of
> going to Apple to help pay for the hardware.
>
> Same with TMobile, and I imagine any other carrier who offsets the price
> of their phones to lock you into a contract.
>
> Just my $0.02.
>
> What you're paying the extra money for, for the Freerunner, is the
> freedom of doing whatever you want with your phone. Sure, the iPhone has
> their SDK released, but all applications still have to go through Apple
> to operate on your phone -- I don't know if the SDK even allows you to
> build an application just for your own iPhone to test it. Also, their
> mobile OS is closed source -- you have no access to hack or tweak it to
> do *exactly* what you want it to. You can't change the applications that
> come with the phone, you can't do a lot of things. Sure, they have lots
> of eye candy and some solid-looking applications, but once we as a
> community port applications to the Freerunner hardware to run on
> OpenMoko, we'll be leaps and bounds ahead of the iPhone software.
>
> That, to me, is worth the extra purchase price.
>
> -id
>
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