Apple iPhone

published

My boss at work has suggested that he might purchase Apple iPhones for us. He needs a new phone, and wants to afford us the opportunity to play with the fancy new gadget, too. We’d be responsible for paying the monthly plan charges – he’d only be able to get the phones themselves for us.

The battery in my Treo is beginning to lose charge, so I was at first a little excited at the idea of getting an iPhone. I admit to being extremely impressed by both the functionality and the sheer elegance of the unit. But upon careful reflection, I think I’m probably going to pass, for a number of reasons:

Another compelling reason to avoid the iPhone is lack of third-party applications. Although I use it only rarely, one of the reasons I really like my Treo is the ability to ssh into Linux servers from anywhere. There is an ssh solution for iPhones, but it’s (to me) an inelegant hack. I don’t know that the Safari scripts permitted on the iPhone will provide the kind of features I would like to have.

The biggest reason not to get the iPhone, though, is cost – both dollars and minutes. We use Sprint for our carrier, currently. Our Family Plan includes me, Carina, and my dad. We have a pool of minutes we all share, and we can call each other’s cell phones without using any minutes. Were I to get an iPhone, I’d be paying an extra monetary fee every month, and Carina and my dad would have to consume minutes when communicating with me (though I likely wouldn’t consume any minutes, due to the iPhone’s free mobile-to-mobile calls).


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