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 _______________________________________________ Openmoko community mailing list community@lists.openmoko.org http://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community
