iPhone Questions Before Purchase

[Turk]

Howdy,

I have an OLD flip phone and will be upgrading. Target has the iPhone 5 w/16G for $149 + a $25 Gift Card.

Is that a good deal?

Is 16G good enough for standard use or get the 32 or 64Gig model?

What's the typical AT&T cost per month?

Or, should I get the HTC?

Thanks!!

 

[jkhawaii]

I am a APPLE fan. They only make the best devices they can, and support them 100%.
That price is a good deal, regular price is 199 for the 16GB model. I prefer to buy direct from APPLE though the $50 savings would not sway me. You would more than likely be ok with the 16GB. My wife has the 16, I have the 32. If you think you will be downloading a lot of games the larger memory iPhone would be better.
for two lines I pay about 164, thats with taxes and everything. you might not use as much data, so, your rate can be less. All phone plans are about the same cost in the end, att, tmob, sprint..... there all about the same. I have had no problems with ATT since 2009 when I bought my first iPhone, a 3G model. Verizon on the other hand....

 

[tomcat27]

for memory, it depends how many songs, pictures, videos, etc that you want to store on your phone. we have an i4 8 Gb that is running low on memory, and an i5 16gb that has plenty of space. I don't know ATT rates without looking - I would imagine $70-80 a month for one phone. as far as iPhone vs HTC: do you have other apple products? if so, get the iPhone. otherwise a android phone is a good choice. you wont go wrong either way. my kids prefer their iPhones.

 

[Donald]

Buy the phone outright and use Net10.

 

[Turk]

Naw, no songs. I may watch some You-tube videos, etc. that's about it.

 

[dave munson]

Walmart's price is lower ($129 + 2 year contract). From my own searching on new phones, all major carriers seem to want about $140 for two phones per month for contract. Each phone is subsided ~$30/month from the contract. Choose your carrier wisely. Choose your carrier wisely. You are going to spend almost 2 grand with them for a typical contract each phone.

I don't think I could go under 32 gigs myself but I keep around 10 gigs of music, 8 gigs for a dozen+ audiobooks and 7 gigs in apps.

Apple is coming out with a new iphone in a couple months and is currently not rated the best BUT always is (rated not the best) at this time of the year. This year more than ever because it looks small, sad and lacking next to the best android phones. Over the last few years I've been more and more disgusted with apple. Anyway, we are looking seriously at the S4. That said, the latest iphone is still on our list.

 

[EricF]

You're better off with the HTC or Samsung S3 or S4.
apple products look nice, but its under the hood that counts.
the [censored] 5 only has a 4" screen, the HTC One has 4 stereo speakers built into it and 32gb of storage. It sports a 4.7" screen that will display youtube (and movies) clearly and flawlessly. the Samsung S4 has a 5" screen (ok, 4.99") and is the #1 phone in the world. apple can only attempt to catch up to it.
the more apple tries to sue other companies for their ridiculous patents, the more they're scared of the product.
Who sues for rounded corners?
The Samsung can be expanded beyond the 16 (0r 32gb) via SD card. It can handle the new 64gb SD cards that are out. Unfortunately the HTC doesn't have an SD card slot. But 32gigs of ram is quite plenty.
I don't see itunes as any advantage. I see it as the ultimate tracking & marketing program.
There's not one movie or song or game that I haven't been able to easily find on Amazon's app store OR Google Play.
Backing up an Android Phone is beyond easy. You can back the phone up to it's own internal storage, plug in the usb cable and copy that file to another computer, OR send it to cloud storage.
Dropbox, Skydrive, etc.. all work seamlessly with this.
You enter all your contacts in your gmail account (if you don't have one, you'll have to sign up for one). and everything sync's quickly and reliably from gmail to your phone.
If your Android phone breaks, get another, log into your gmail account and within 5 minutes all your contact info will be re-populated on your phone.
Personally I prefer to reinstall programs from scratch vs. relying on a backup. I use backups for data, like songs, music & pictures, nothing more.
So I log into Google Play and click the programs i want put back (it's also a great time for cleaning up), and moments later you're back in business. I'm not a fan of cloud storage, maybe I'm just a bit old fashioned in that sense. Although with Dropbox and Samsung, my S3 yielded me 50gigs off free storage for 3 years with them.
I can have an android phone up & running 100% within 20 minutes. (having to wait for the wifi downloads takes some time).

I don't put any weight into asthetics because I always end up having a cover for my phones anyway, so asthetics are a waste for me to consider anyway.

 

[Win]

Don't bother with a 16 gb phone, if you take a lot of pictures.

Get the 64.

I have 5 cell phones with AT&T, three with unlimited data, all with unlimited messaging. My bill is about $220 month.

I've bouht every iteration of the iPhone and a couple of iPads for my wife. They're grossly overblown and overpriced, imo.

 

[JHZR2]

I have a 4 GB 4S, the wife has a 16GB. We have a 9mo old and take lots of pictures. I hav a good deal of space, she is full. I think 32 GB is a good happy medium unless you take lots of photos and videos (like me) and want them always with you.

The droid phones that everyone swoons over are obnoxiously big. With more processor and more screen comes the need for a bigger battery, or else much worse life. Frankly I find watching movies and much of anything on even a 5" screen obnoxious, so there is little interest there. Cruising any website is just fine IMO on the 4S screen, and while Im not a big fan of the longer iPhone 5 screen (easy to fall out of a regular dress shirt pocket, which is where I carry mine), it should be a bit better.

Texting is the #1 most marked up consumer product sold today. We buycott it, and only use imessage (free), Ihave unlimited data (and I use 2-3GB/month), my wife has a 2GB plan. Our bill is around $129-134/month (depending upon how many texts others send us, but it is still FAR cheaper than paying $30/month for unlimited texting, which is the ATT option). A few months weve come in less than that.

Im not convinced that the non-subsidized plans are that great of a deal unless youre planning on keeping your device much longer than two years.

 

[JHZR2]

Originally Posted By: EricF

I don't see itunes as any advantage. I see it as the ultimate tracking & marketing program.




Youre free to your opinions on everything else, all of which may or may not be valid (love how many of the design attributes that the droid crowd knock the iphone for have manifested themselves as "features" in the HTC One variations). However I have to laugh at this, given th extent that Google tracks its users in the interest of selling advertising. Its not like google is innocent here in any way.

I havent touched itunes in months. But every time i search for something on google or send an email on gmail, Im being tracked by google...

 

[dishdude]

Personally I prefer Android, and the Galaxy line. I had a Galaxy S2 and decided to try an iPhone 4S when I was eligible to upgrade, and ended up returning it for the S3. I am not sure if it was because I had an Android first and just wasn't used to it, but I just couldn't get used to iOS.

When I bought my ATS, they included an iPad. I've been using it for a few months and I still don't like iOS.

Try them both out for a while in the store and see what you think.

 

[Win]

Cell phones are so inexpensive these days, there's no real reason to constrain yourself to just one. I use whatever phone that best fits what I'm doing at the time.

I use a windows 8 phone during the day for business, and weekends and some evenings I just pop the sim card into a ruggedized android or a ruggedized dumbphone.

The sheer variety of phones on AliExpress or similar China direct marketplaces is just staggering and expanding daily.

 

[97prizm]

Why waste money on an iphone 5? My boss has gone through three this year that have failed in some way. The specs are dated when it showed up. There are many phones on the market that are faster, have better cameras etc. Don't waste your money.

 

[rjundi]

I am more than fine with 16GB in my iPhone 4s. The I would purchase the iPhone 5 over the 4s due to anemic performance of 3G at best. Hurry up and wait.

HTC are nice however try typing and correcting etc on the Apple. Apple has way more budget, time and motivation to make the touch feel,operation of iOs and few related devices perfect. Android fails as it is dependent on phone maker and os.

Not an apple fan buy but they just have it nailed down pat for my dad to functions of checking email, text messages and calling.

 

[JHZR2]

Originally Posted By: rjundi
I am more than fine with 16GB in my iPhone 4s. The I would purchase the iPhone 5 over the 4s due to anemic performance of 3G at best. Hurry up and wait.


What are you doing that 3G isnt fast enough? Serious question...

I email and receive a LOT of photos, in the 3-7 MB range. They do take a few seconds to go out. But anything else is really totally fine with 3G, and if it is less battery intensive, may be a better data conduit for regular use.

I do many, many GB of data on 4G connections on my work tethered BB. I cant say that it is impressively fast... But maybe it is somehow crippled. It strikes me that its latency is slower than 3G, even if raw xfer speeds are faster...

 

[440Magnum]

Originally Posted By: Turk
Naw, no songs. I may watch some You-tube videos, etc. that's about it.



YouTube requires no on-phone storage, so if you're not going to load it with songs or STORED video files (eg. from the iTunes store), then 16G is plenty for books and apps.

But IMO the ability of the iPhone (and other smartphones) to go "off grid" and carry a lot of music and video is a real strength. If you don't do that, then you can't watch anything when you can't connect by cellular or WiFi- like on airplanes although many of them are getting WiFi now.

 

[123Saab]

Iphones are very easy to use and durable.
We have 2 atm and they do what you ask them to do.

Get as much memory as you can afford, I've never been upset about having too much....

If you like to play with Apps and geek out on Android get a Korean Phone.

To some people smart phones are a Hobby, and They love to tinker with them.

To others, A simple tool to get stuff done.

I still use a BlackBerry btw, Most likely I'll go to a Nokia 1020...next...

 

[Quattro Pete]

Originally Posted By: JHZR2
Originally Posted By: rjundi
I am more than fine with 16GB in my iPhone 4s. The I would purchase the iPhone 5 over the 4s due to anemic performance of 3G at best. Hurry up and wait.


What are you doing that 3G isnt fast enough? Serious question...

I find that web browsing works a lot faster on 4g.

 

[rjundi]

Originally Posted By: JHZR2
Originally Posted By: rjundi
I am more than fine with 16GB in my iPhone 4s. The I would purchase the iPhone 5 over the 4s due to anemic performance of 3G at best. Hurry up and wait.


What are you doing that 3G isnt fast enough? Serious question...



Spotify and Pandora a maddening experience skipping away. 4g never happens due to ability to buffer way ahead and "poor reception" is still 2mb-4mb so never seems to stop. Google maps and yelp very laggy. Just find it quite slow and annoying.

Most of my 3g only runs at .5mb/s not the fully optimal 2mb/s for 3g. The optimal for 3g is the absolute worst for 4g. Just my personal experiences.

My kids occasionally use Netflix in a pinch in the car. iPhone 4s a maddening experience start/stopping/ iPhone 5 it simply plans on...

 

[JHZR2]

NE must be a far cry from the NY-DC corridor that I run in.

Google maps loads just fine for the most part, unless I really scroll or expand/contract a huge amount really fast in a congested area, and the latency still is pretty minor. I stream Pandora and I heart radio all the time (around 1.5GB worth a month) and cant think of a single time that it is skipped or lost buffer. A recent 1000 mile road trip had it doing so in some of the boony areas of SC and GA, but I doubt there is 4G there anyway.

I browse a ton and the difference between 4G on the BB and 3G on the iphone is not noticable.

I can certainly appreciate the need for 4G streaming netflix, or if one wanted to stream 720 or 1080p on an iphone for whatever reason (doubt the eyes could resolve it).

If 4G is a battery hog, Id rather go with the slower data route that works perfect for just about everything, for as much time as possible to save juice. Its a far different situation, IMO, than downgrading to 2G, which would indeed be impossible.

Anyway, just curious, because Im plenty happy with 3G, and do about 3GB/month on my iphone and probably 10 or so of VPN on my BB, which is currently 4G, but I used to use a VZ air card that was 3G and was just fine.