Free Runner price vs iphone 3G price

ian douglas ian.douglas at iandouglas.com
Tue Jun 10 19:56:44 CEST 2008


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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