The all New iPhone 4G – Good & Bad

Yes it is, but does it have a downside? Yes it does.

Now don’t get me wrong I’ve had an iPhone 3G for the past 2 years and it’s been a superb phone, originally it cost me £90 for the phone and £30 per month on an 18 month contract which I never minded paying as the phone was such as technological marvel at the time.

But will I be upgrading to a new iPhone 4G ? Currently No.



Initially like everyone else I waited eagerly for an upgraded iPhone, received emails from my phone provider each day, counting down the days, one of the emails even said I could be entitled to upgrade for free, I heard a rumor from Apple that the price would be lower than previous model, but as the days passed I was told it would not be free.

The reason for this stems from the fact that the new iPhone 4G is a great phone, but is it vastly superior to the competition?

Is it worth an extra £250 on top of the cut down contract? (limited browsing, cut down texts and minutes)

I personally don’t think so, and a lot of other people will probably think the same, maybe this is the reason why Android based phones are currently outselling iPhones.

As a rough guide a HTC Desire (super phone) is free and its costs around £30 a month, this will give unlimited internet, unlimited texts & around 600 minutes, meaning a total cost of £720 over a two year contract.

An iPhone on the other hand will cost around £270 for the phone, plus around £40 a month for decent minutes, internet and texts etc.

A total cost of around £1200!!

Apart from a cost saving of £500, the HTC desire in my opinion is on par with the new iPhone 4G.

In terms of the operating systems, Apple is releasing its latest iOS 4, and Google is releasing Frodo or Android 2.2 which is a very slick system.

I remember many years back, when we either used IBM or Apple Macintosh computers, Microsoft then licensed DOS and later versions of Windows to other manufacturers so we had many different computer manufacturers using DOS and Windows based computers, once this happened the PC market became the dominant computer type on the market, and Apple became something of a niche market aimed at designers.

Could the same thing be happening now?

When Google created their Android based phone OS they made it open source so in effect any mobile phone provider could use it, so unlike the iPhone being limited to 2 or 3 models over 3 years with Android you have a much larger selection of phones which are generally cheaper and growing all the time.

Maybe Apple should license their operating system to other phone providers giving users a much wider choice.

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