I paid $199 for the iPhone 3G but I needed a 2 year contract with AT&T to get it. This is why the iPhone is priced differently in the Philippines.
First off, the OS. it's clean, relatively speedy, and the app store offers a good amount of free and paid add on applications for it. As of now, I have approximately 20 different apps.
3g service kinda sucks - i've been reading the complaints and they say it is probably a software problem (hoping it is), but others say that its a physical hardware problem (please god no!!). Damn slow. If your moving, like in a car, the service sucks even more.
wifi - great on this. if I place the iphone right next to my USB54g adapter, i usually get 1 bar less. transmission rate is pretty good for the specs and the phone can handle a lot of different security protocals like WPA, WEP, etc.. currently using WPA.
Texting - I'm used to using the number pad and the iphone uses a qwerty style interface. Here's what irks me -- my no handwriting recognition. My P900 did that well and this phone can't do it. They say 3rd party apps will probably have it but reports say that apple doesn't allow enough enough access to developers for this to become possible for texting. As for using the qwerty- it takes getting used to but the learning curve isn't too steep.
MMS - sorry, not possible. As of yet.
Email support - pretty nice actually. Push email, html, and clicking links in email app will open the web browser automatically. I'm using it to manage 3 email accounts. In comparison, I used my v6maxx to manage my gmail account (yahoo was too damn hard to configure).
GPS - not bad. Doesn't support turn by turn but if you zoom in enoughg, you can see yourself moving thru traffic. In comparison, my Tom Tom, is great. It tells me when to turn and how far away from the turn I am. Both give you an estimated time of arrival.
Notes - nothing special.
Camera - no video, and the camera is only 2 mega pixels. Photo management sucks. It's too much of a hassle to organize your pictures on the phone by itself. No folder management. you need to connect it to a PC to use it (windows port of itunes sucks). Picture quality will be posted later. Want to share a photo? you can email it... no sharing through bluetooth or wifi. I don't know why. There might be a couple of perspective apps for this but haven't seen them yet.
Music management - Great at it but not that great... First off, you need itunes. But simply great at organizing music. Nuff said.
Web browsing - this is where the iphone shines but misses the target by a hair. You get full html browser support. When you visit a website, you'll get a full view, not a stripped down mobile version. My biggest complaint - no flash support...
why is this important? Let's say your bored and want to watch a video on uhm, www.spankwire.com - no luck.
The iphone does have youtube support, but videos there are ported over to quicktime so you can see it on the iphone.
Personal conclusion - not worth the 37K.
All the stuff that makes the iphone worth its price has everything to do with connectivity. 3g is liveable and wifi is great. Here, wifi is everywhere - people just don't secure their routers here. In the philippines, it's a different story. As far as I know, globe has a crappy 3g network and unlimited data plan for globe has yet to surface.
Final score for the iPhone is a 6 or 7 for 199 dollars in the US but considering the Philippine environment, it drops down to a 4.
Biggest gripe - no cut and paste function... my P900 had this, and it was essential.
Hope that helps some people make up their minds about it.
By: russelg000
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