New AT&T data plans

What do you guys think of the new AT&T data plan pricing?

On the one hand, I'm thrilled to have a carrier be upfront about everything. As long as I never see the word "unlimited" applied to any of these plans, I'll be happy with their decision to be straightforward with their customers, both on what they get from the plans they pay for and what they can expect when they go over.

But on the other hand, I can't help but think that these plans hurt the heavy data user. I understand that people use less data than they think - we've talked about that before in regards to the iPad - but the fact remains that there are people who need more than 200MB of data (I'd burn through that in a couple days), and for those people these plans just seem a little worse.

I was a little shocked to see that they'd change the iPad pricing. I figured Apple had worked out a deal on that front, and I thought it was a fantastic deal. I was really impressed by that. I guess AT&T finally realized that it didn't make sense to give the iPad truly unlimited data when the iPhone didn't have it. I never understood that.

For me, the biggest offense here is that if someone is paying MORE for tethering, they don't get any more bandwidth. What that says is "yes, we give you these 2GB, but don't really use it, it's just there to make you feel good." Would it kill their business to give tethering plans another GB or two?

All I know is that I'm sitting pretty on T-Mobile with unofficial hotspot capability for no additional cost We'll see how long that lasts...

I'll also be curious to hear how tethering will [finally] work on the iPhone. Will it be traditional tethering or will they also have hotspot sharing?

What should be offensive is having to pay for tethering at all. You're paying for... Wait for it.... Nothing. Which is another way of saying what you've described, ATT doesn't actually want you to use 2GB or even 200MB when you're paying for those plans.

Tethering on the iPhone has been around and fully functional for almost a year. There might be something new in OS 4, but you don't have to wait to find out how tethering itself works, you can go read about it now. It uses either the USB dock connector or Bluetooth. I think it would be trivial for them to extend this to using WiFi and the reason it's not there already was probably to have something to release later or to appease carriers who don't want you setting up little private 3G networks.

Totally agree. $20 for something that AT&T has no control over anyway. It's like if the water utility told you that you have to pay them an additional $20 if you have automatic lawn sprinklers.

It's the whole culture of bundled services / value-added selling that bugs the living crap out of me. Not only am I paying for things I don't need, the sellers have this notion of still owning what I've purchased. I've said it before, but I want to buy a phone, and I want to purchase service. After that, leave me the hell alone. That's probably the main reason I bought my Nexus One. Too bad Google were too gutless to follow through.

I'm divided on it. To get the old 5GB ("unlimited") a month plan would cost $20 more ($50 total instead of $30). However, they are making it possible to lower peoples bills now. Before this, no matter what data cost $30 a month on 3G for the iPhone. Now, people can shrink that down to just $15 and be fine. I checked my iPhone statistics, going back to July of 08, and I've used an average of 245mb a month. My first month with the iPad when I was intentionally using certain things heavily, I still only hit 389mb. That will go down quite a bit, as WiFi at our new office is finally coming online in the next week or two.

It's also good to see AT&T being way more proactive in notifying users when they are approaching their monthly limit. Having warnings at 65%, 90% and 100% should help to avoid the surprise of overage.

I can partially see AT&Ts side on the tethering. Data usage on a phone, or even an iPad is going to be less then data usage on a laptop. My phone and iPad aren't constantly downloading OS X/Windows updates in the background (with sizes sometimes rivaling my monthly usage just to update iTunes). I'm not pulling down tons of flash, 720p Youtube videos and so on. So that part I understand. However, charging $20 extra is what I'll disagree with, especially since it doesn't even add any data. If I burn through my 2GB in a month, then start charging me overage.

As for what T-Mobile or others will do, it's hard to say, but the industry tends to follow each other closely. Charging for tethering is pretty standard unfortunately, and I doubt most carriers are pleased with Google tossing it into 2.2 without having each carrier enable it. It will be interesting to see what happens there.

I think you're missing the point. People complained that "unlimited" didn't really mean that the service was unlimited. Now they have a 2GB plan instead, but they clearly intend for you to not use that much data.

Yes, a desktop OS will likely consume more bandwidth. But there's still the 2GB cap. If you're still under 2GB after attaching your computer, why should they charge you more?

And the only possible answer is that they don't want you to actually consume the 2GB of bandwidth that you've paid for. Basically, you pay $25 for 2GB of bandwidth, and then you pay another $20 to actually use it.

I understand where they're coming from, though. They want to put a cap on the amount of data you're using. They don't want you to use your 3G connection as your home ISP. But they also want to avoid penalizing people who occasionally go over whatever their real maximum is.

The correct solution to this is probably something like: Set the cap at whatever their real limit is. Let's say 250MB. Then have a floating window of free overage quota, say 6GB over a year, 500MB a month. Each month you go over 250MB, that overage gets subtracted from your quota. After a year, you recover that used quota.

It sounds a little complicated, but it's actually easy to depict on a bill. Have a stacking bar graph that shows each of the last 12 months of overage, and mark the cap. (See below.)

The somewhat odd part is that when you go over, you have to buy more quota for that span of 12 months, so that you don't get double-charged. That is a little harder to depict.

I understand that people are suspicious of complex billing schemes, but something like this probably is the most fair for everyone.

Since they already have the infrastructure up where do they lose money if you use X bandwidth?

I might be missing the point (and I did say I disagree with the tethering charge), but another side of this that will be a big win for most people is cheeper data access. It goes from $30 a month down to $15 (plus whatever voice plan) now for minimum barrier to entry on a smartphone. Yes, AT&T (Sprint/Verizon/T-Mobile) would love everyone to just give them money and not use the service. What this move will likely mean is that AT&T will sign up even more people for data plans, and a large majority of them will never run into the overage charges even at the low 200MB entry point. So while they won't have people giving them money for nothing, they will have more people giving them some money for data.

And as far as penalizing people who go over, I find the new rules way better then the old ones. If you ran over the limit, you were billed very harsly. Now, you incur maybe an extra $10-$15, and have warnings before it happens.

A better solution that would be easily understandable to existing AT&T customers would be rollover data. With rollover (expiring after a year or so), you get the same benefit of allowing a few heavier usage months without penalty from time to time. And if you do get dinged the extra $10 a month once, then the unused part of that overage then is added into the pool, possibly eliminating the overage the next month. You get the same benefits as your plan, but without having to worry about planning for a bigger quota for a 12 month period.


They only have X number of radio spectrum slots and Y number of bits at each tower. If they continue to add new customers, they have to add more infrastructure. If people are capped at 200MB, or 2GB or some other number, it's easier to meet those demands compared to planning around unlimited use. An additional challenge comes in on the mobility side. Their infrastructure isn't mobile and only covers a small area with each tower. So to meet the demands of say me wanting to watch Netflix 24/7 on my iPad, they would need to beef up capacity at the tower near my home, near my work, and every tower around the areas I commonly hang out at. Time Warner by comparison only has to worry about improving the infrastructure at my house and any related upstream infrastructure.

Like Bitt said, I don't think that's the point. The point is that you are paying for 2GB of bandwidth for a month. It doesn't matter how you use that data connection, you paid for it. If they've done the math and concluded that the most bandwidth they can handle is 2GB, then they should do the opposite of what I suggested in my first post: make the "Data Pro" plan 1GB, and if you pay for tethering, you get 2GB.


Continuing from the idea that it shouldn't matter if you use all the data, it also shouldn't matter how quickly you use it. Everybody's billing periods don't all start on the same day each month, so usage is staggered. So again, it's a matter of AT&T not wanting you to use it. If it's a strain on their network to have all 2GB used, they should reflect that in their plans.


I never said I didn't like the idea of the 200MB plan. Just because I go over that in a month doesn't mean everyone will. I do think that we'll start using more and more data in the future, so we should worry about this (video chat, that cloud media syncing patent, etc), but for now a lot of people will benefit from the 200MB plan. I'm just concerned with AT&T's tethering prices and what they reflect.


Bitt, I like your idea, but I'm afraid that's probably a little more complicated than most users will be able to understand. Plus, the carrier would never make it as easy to understand as you have. They have a talent for obfuscating simple ideas.

I like what T-Mobile has proposed:

You get 5GB of bandwidth. If you go over, your connection is throttled.

That's it! It saves the network from bandwidth hogs, but it still lets you do all the most important things like email and light web browsing. And best of all I think all users could understand that.

Oh, don't get me wrong. I think the new AT&T plans are far more honest than the old one, and I think that the vast majority of people will see their data bill go down. I also agree that more people will be likely to sign up at $15 a month, which is great.

My complaint is solely with the tethering charge, and it belies their notion that you're really getting 2GB of bandwidth per month. I would be totally surprised if they didn't charge that tethering fee for any people who consistently use a large percentage of their bandwidth, regardless of whether they're tethering or not. After all, there's not really any way for them to determine whether there's any tethering going on or not.

This also ties into my complaint about the difficulty that exists in having your phone and your service being distinct from each other.

They oversubscribe their bandwidth. They potentially lose money in that their service sucks because it's always slow. Kinda like it is right now. Or they have to expand their infrastructure.

Yeah, I guess that is almost what I described, anyway, isn't it, except that in my scenario, some portion of your data doesn't rollover, and you start with virtual rollover data.

I use Veriaon wireless for my home ISP. I bump right up to my 5G limit every month.

I can't do any streaming at all.

A couple of interesting side notes to this:

- Someone said that the new data plans go into effect on something like the 7th, which is the same day that Steve Jobs will announce the iPhone 4g, which, with its faster connection speed, has the potential to use up even more data per minute. Not a coincidence, obviously.

- Supposedly, those who are already on the unlimited data plan can stay on it at the same price (i.e., they're upholding the contract we already signed). I'm guessing that if I wanted to buy the new telephone, doing so would nullify said contract and I would be subject to the new pricing scheme. Damn.

Nope, I'm wrong! Yay!

Decided to see what AT&T showed for my recent usage. Looks like I'll be fine on the 2GB a month plan with current usage. Hard to say how that would change with the new phone though.

Cell phone plans are way too complicated these things need to get unlimited already. I have been seeing unlimited plans offered so this seems like a step back. I also can't believe AT&T is still the only place in the USA you can get an iphone.

The problem is that none of the nominally unlimited plans are actually unlimited.

Jobs didn't directly address this at the recent D8 interview, but he did make some relevant comments. Apple really wants to just build one device and ship it anywhere in the world. They don't want to produce phone X for market Y, and phone Z for yet another market. AT&T is the only provider in the US who offers 3G GSM service on frequencies that align with what others use in the rest of the world. T-Mobile 3G uses a frequency setup noone else does, and Sprint/Verizon don't even use a compatible protocol (CDMA).

This will change down the road with AT&T, T-Mobile and Verizon all planning on LTE for 4G at some point, and Sprint hasn't taken the option off the table.

And I doubt Apple is holding to this as the only reason not to go to Verizon or the others. It's just a strong factor. Next week, we may all be talking about the newest iPhone being available on some other carrier. They did after all make one alternate revision for China, iPhones lacking WiFi.

I'm not trying to be contrary here, I just wasn't aware that there was even a rumor that the fourth generation iPhone would have any sort of faster connection. Even if it does, isn't AT&T still really far away from rolling out its 4G network? (by really far away I mean late 2011 to start)

I try to stick to "fourth-gen iPhone" because it's hard to say what they'll call it. If they call it the 4G, and it isn't on a 4G network, wouldn't that be a little disingenuous? And taking it one further, they couldn't release a phone next year and call it the 5G...

You have a good point. I assumed that since the phone was going to be named the "4G" that it could function on a "4G" network. But that's an interesting point of view: That the phone's name, and the network it operates on, could be two completely unrelated things.

I believe this was why Apple let the prototype get stolen. Seed the term "4G" with a couple of journalists, let the story multiply over the wires and, next thing you know, Apple's new phone is "4G".

I was getting tired of AT&T and my Treo so decided to try a 30-day experiment with a 4G phone on Friday, the Sprint HTC Evo. If I were traveling a lot I wouldn't pick this, but I tend to stay in their service area and don't take phones on vacations.

Wow, I got totally sucked in by that.

Public relations fail.

Wow what a dick !

Should I be sending cease and desists when I get unsolicited junk mail from AT&T ?

Now we know why AT&T is the way that it is.

Steve made it painfully obvious last night that he'd love to have the iPhone available on other carriers in the US. If there were other GSM/UMTS carriers with the same frequencies I'm sure the exclusivity agreement wouldn't have been as long and you guys would already have some choice.

Sorry, I forgot to ask you about this: since when? As far as I've heard, tethering still wasn't available. Are you talking about jailbroken phones? Because that doesn't count...

Of course, that means you can't get tethering.

He is perfectly correct, tethering has been available and working for a year. Just not in the US.

Ahh! That's right. I knew that.

Sorry, Bruno, but that's a weird argument to make. Aren't we talking about US AT&T cell phone plans? Yeah, it's great that other countries have tethering, but guess where it was promised a year ago and never delivered (and never even mentioned again)?

He wasn't making an argument, you said:

I'll also be curious to hear how tethering will [finally] work on the iPhone. Will it be traditional tethering or will they also have hotspot sharing?

He responded by saying that tethering already worked on the iPhone and that if you wanted to find out how it already worked you could read up on it. He also explained that it only works over USB and Bluetooth, but not via wifi.

Ah, my mistake entirely. You are correct. My apologies.

I still wonder if the fourth gen iPhone will have hotspot. If it doesn't, they'll be behind several phones on the market. Given these plans, though, I certainly wouldn't want to be sharing a 2GB bandwidth cap with 8 devices

I've used tethering on several occasions in the past with a few different phones, and I'd pick hotspot sharing over tethering any day. Even bluetooth tethering is annoying, and requires more work to connect to than a simple WiFi network.

You must emit some sort of anti-Bluetooth field.

Agreed :-) Back when tethering could be turned on with iPhone 3.0 betas on AT&T, all I needed to do is click on my Bluetooth icon in the menu bar, click the menu option for the phone, then click connect. When I was done, same procedure. Never had to take my phone out of my pocket or fiddle with settings on it once the phone had been paired with the computer (a one time setup).

Now what would have been really slick is if the iPhone paired to the Mac in a way to route voice calls to the computer speakers and microphone. Would allow both bluetooth tethering, and the ability to make calls at the same time without the phone leaving my pocket.

I was just making clear that it's not a feature missing in the iPhone, its OS or its software. It's all there. It's just blocked/disabled on US phones courtesy of ATT. So, I was only making a suggestion that if you wanted to know how it worked, you could read some reviews of that feature from people outside the US of how it's set up and used. There are many out there.

Yes, I apologized for and acknowledged that. See above.


I do have an aversion to bluetooth, although I seem to have my first good experience with the technology on my Nexus One. And you're right, Tom, your setup sounds very simple, so I won't argue that.

To defend the WiFi hotspot, there are devices that can't do bluetooth networking. I was able to use my Zune HD to download music from the Zune marketplace on the go.

That's not a bad idea, actually...

No need. For one thing, you can connect multiple devices without having an additional level of network sharing.

Bluetooth probably uses less power, though. And it's nice to be able to turn it on from the client device rather than the phone. Hm, someone should write an app for that.

That's what I'm hoping. At the very least, it should be possible to put an icon on the home screen that turns it on. As it is, my only complaint about how they've implemented it is that it takes, I believe, 5 screen presses to turn it on, when it could easily take one.

But yes, being able to do it all from the client's end would be nice.

Crap, knew I forgot about something likely to increase my usage soon...

I'm still mostly listening to podcasts in the car these days, but do hit times where I either have none to listen to, or just want some music. I may stick to my current $30 a month plan a bit longer to see.

Almost has me considering an Evo since 4G is online in Austin already. It's a shame I can't just try out an Android device to see how it would really fit into my setup. Not willing to port my number to another carrier and buy a device without some hands on time.

Does anyone know if it's possible to port a number over after you've already been assigned one by the carrier? Seems like it would be feasible to me, but I don't know about these things. If so, and if Sprint has a return policy, then you could forward your iPhone's number while you try it out. You wouldn't be able to call from that forwarded number, but it would at least be a way to test it out. It's not convenient, but it's something...

Aren't you on Google Voice yet? My real numbers are becoming irrelevant.

You can. I assume the 4G you're talking about is Sprint's. They have a 30-day trial period.

Agreed. I now use Google Voice for everything, and don't even give my cell phone number out anymore.

One thing I love about Google Voice: a month ago, I was getting solicitation calls from the same number every few days. I just went into GV, into the call log, and blocked the number. One of many things I love about it, in addition to the visual voicemail, personalized outgoing messages, integration with my GMail contacts, and much more.

Plus, on Android you can actually use a Google Voice app

And, by and large, it doesn't even appear to be an app. Integration with Google Voice is nearly seamless. The only problems are when you lose your data connection and it can't tell GV which number to call, and you get duplicate texts, unless you turn text delivery to your phone off.

I have an unused Google Voice account, because if I use it, I lose visual voicemail. I also wasn't happy with the lag back when it was GrandCentral. Not sure if Google has done anything to improve that. So I never ported my number over. I want to hold on to it, as I've had it for 11 years now.

I'm also not seeing pricing on sprint.com yet for monthly service. If what I read elsewhere, the idea is probably dead to me already. I'm seeing $69.99 for the base "everything" plan (that I don't care to be forced into), plus $10 a month for 4g, plus $29.99 a month for the mobile hotspot feature for my iPad. That puts me at ~$110 a month plus taxes. I could go unlimited on the iPad and keep "unlimited" on my iPhone and still be below that cost.

What lag?

Lag when talking to people. It was noticeably higher then even normal cell phone voice lag.

huh. Never seen, err, heard that.

The lag is still there, but it's not terribly significant.

You could port the number you want to keep to, for example, Callcentric, and have it forwarded to your cellphone number.

While it was a fun idle though, digging into more Evo info has me pretty turned off at this point. Higher monthly cost, nearly every review saying the battery can't make it a single day even with light usage and 4G off, and still the unknown of how Android would work for my needs. Add in the complexity of dealing with my number, signing contracts, and dealing with returns, and I think thats that for now.

I really do wish GSM had taken off here in the states. Having my phone number tied to a little smart card chip is so handy. If someone else was around with an Android phone compatible with AT&T, I could just swap with them for a week or two.

You can put an AT&T SIM in a T-Mobile phone; you just won't get 3G.

Also, unless the service plan cost is a complete dealbreaker, which I can certainly understand, you can still get a 30-day trial from Sprint.

My N1 generally makes it a full day unless I have particularly heavy usage, and, even then, generally charging it in the car on the drive to wherever is enough to top it off for the day. It also claims, in almost all cases, that a definitive majority of the battery is being used by the display, if you're to believe the report. So maybe there's some backlight tweaking to be done on the Evo.

(Also, it's spelled "idyll". Good word, though.)

Tom, there isn't a phone out there that compares to Apple's 2007 effort yet. Many have more features which make them seem very attractive or appear to smoke the first gen iPhone. But everything seems to have at least two or three big flaws as well. Things get more skewed when you come up to the 3GS and I'm quite confident the new model debuting next week is going to really pull ahead in a significant way. Of course Matt Warman thinks the new iPhone is crap - he must have something he found while dumpster diving at 1 Infinite Loop. Every one of his ten "reasons" is factually incorrect. 9 if you give him a boat-load of slack.

Regardless of how good Google makes the OS, for now we're still mpostly seeing hardware from discount or third-rate brands like Motorola, Samsung, LG and HTC (sorry, these guys all make shite hardware). Nokia and Sony-Ericsson otherwise make the best handsets on the planet.

Idle thought is usually spelled with a t, not a y.

The only thing I kind of want that I don't have is "proper" Exchange support such that I can use my work email on my phone. That said, I certainly don't miss it and, having achieved it at some point would probably make me yearn for the days without it.

2.2 adds ActiveSync Exchange Mail and Calendar "push"-based access. (I forget if Mail via ActiveSync worked before. Calendar is definitely a new feature.) This should work if you can access your company email via Outlook Web Access.

Ah. Hrm.

I interpreted what he said as "a fun idyll, tho'". You're probably right that he meant "idle thought".

Alright, move along. Nothing to see here.

They require fancy stuff like the ability to wipe my phone on a whim. Another reason I'm not too hurt that I can't view my email from my phone.

Interestingly, I'm one of the rare people who doesn't care about tethering his iPhone. I work for a company that sells software that's meant to be used with all-you-can-eat WWAN cards, and it's my job to test our software against said cards, so they're like candy around here. You should see my desk.

I have work e-mail on my phone and iPad mostly as a convenience around the office when away from my desk. If at any point my job requires me to be accessible via e-mail outside core hours, they can pay my bill.

He is correct on point 1, given that he is UK based. In the UK you can get the HTC Desire free on a £30/month tariff. A 16GB 3GS on a £30*/month tariff cost £149 (£249 for a 32GB). Likewise you can also get a BlackBerry Storm2 for free on a £30/month deal. A Nexus one is £59 for £30/month.

He has a point also on the reception abilities, the iPhone definitely suffers in comparison to most non-smartphones in marginal signal areas, not sure how it compares to the various Android phones.

He also has a point on satnav, kind of. Google does give you free satnav, but I'm not at all convinced it would actually be useful to me. I regularly use my sat nav as a kind of backup, I'll deliberately take a route off of where the sat nav suggests, because it looks more interesting. Typically when I'm using it like that, I'll be in a poor data signal area. I really can't see how Google's approach can cope well with that.

But yeah, the rest is a load of rubbish.

The factor that I have seen many people mention is battery drain due to background apps consuming CPU. So a favorite app is some sort of Task Killer.

I decided I wouldn't let reports about battery life deter me as I am chained to a desk mostly and have always bought a few extra cables for local charging.

My big interest in Evo is potential for wi-fi hotspot operation. The ISP for liveaboards? Oh, and it looks cool. And it's not an iPhone. I could write my *own* "I'm Rich!" app.

Interesting that Evo launches in June when the 30-day trial period can be expected to be warm and sunny. We'll see how McCaw's Wi-Max fares when the serious Seattle rains return in winter

Here's how to fix your Evo and Incredible battery consumption: http://www.mobilecrunch.com/2010/06/03/t...-about-android/

Great article, thanks. Advanced Task Killer sounds like the app. I really don't want widget animation so that's an easy sacrifice. Interesting, though, that I may have to contend with "push" apps from Sprint that I really don't want.

nice -n 19 NASCAR_Sprint_App?

Screw that. If Sprint can't tell me in 30 days how to get NASCAR off my damn phone, they're taking it back.

Oh come on, seriously? He's honestly saying that the only way the phone is usable is to set the screen to 10% brightness and root the phone so you can underclock the CPU? Seriously? That is a load of bull s**t. Actually, due to the extreme nature of their suggestions, I call FUD on that article.

Where to start? Okay, lets start with the writer's claims that the EVO and the Incredible are BOTH horrible battery hogs. I don't know about the EVO, but the Nexus One and the Incredible are essentially the same phone, and I simply DO NOT experience the battery problems claimed in this article. Heck, the EVO is the same phone too, just with a larger screen. That, of course, affects battery life, but the EVO also has a larger battery than the other two phones.

So the reason I have a hard time believing that the Incredible has bad battery life is based on my experience with the N1. As I type this, my phone has been on battery power for 17 hours. In that time it has been on full brightness every time I turn it on. I've sent about 12 emails from it today, talked on the phone for 25 minutes, played games on it for 20 minutes, browsed the web for 15 minutes, used it on WiFi and 3G, and listened to podcasts for around two hours straight. My battery life is at around 66%, and that is perfectly acceptable to me.


All that said, I have to agree with you, Jim. I wasn't aware that Sprint was putting software of their own on the EVO. Apparently carriers don't realize that they have, in the history of the cell phone industry, written the absolute worst garbage that's ever been put on any of their own phones. It's one of the reasons the Backflip sucks. I don't believe that Verizon does this on their Android phones, and I know that T-Mobile doesn't force their own apps on you (I believe my G1 had a T-Mobile app that I couldn't uninstall, but it never ran in the background so I didn't care).

Lastly, I'm more than willing to agree that Sense might be a culprit in any battery problems. Fortunately instructions were just released on putting the standard Android 2.1 on the EVO.

I'm seeing reports of bad battery life pretty much everywhere regarding the Evo. From TechCrunch (way near the bottom of my list of sites I trust), Engadget and other blogs, to real journalists like Andy Ihnatko and Walt Mossberg.


Ok, great, there may be a song and dance I can do with firmware upgrades from random sources to improve things, but at that point the product has already failed me. If I buy an Android phone, I want it to be usable out of the box. Ok, there may be some bugs and quirks, but I'd expect those to be fixed and sent down to me automatically as updates. The second I have to go manually do some process to flash it with an unsupported update is the second it's no longer a phone to me. I like the ability to hack and tinker with my devices from time to time, but such activities should not be required to make the device usable to me.

And back to price. Sprint.com has the Evo page live now, and sure enough, minimum monthly charge for me to use the Evo with tethering would cost me $109.98 before taxes and fees. So yeah, the Evo is definitely dead to me, before I've even seen one. Being that it was on the top of my list for Android phones, that may be it for my consideration for a while. If I'm going to leave AT&T, it's not going to be for Verizon. Sprint at least offers me something above AT&T with possible 4G usage. Verizon would take things away, like using data while on a phone call (and yes, I do make use of that). So the Incredible and other "Droid" phones are out.

The Nexus One doesn't run any HTC software. Who knows what those guys changed in Android that could be affecting battery consumption. While nearly every HTC phone looks identical on the outside, HTC likely also tweaks the hardware-specific portions of the firmware between models. The EVO looks decidedly different than the others, but you can hardly call all the independent evaluations of this model coming to the same or similar conclusions a coincidence.

Anyway, if I was in the US, I'd likely be with ATT, not necessarily because they have the iPhone, but because they're also using the global standard GSM/UTMS. Anything else 3G and earlier is just barbaric. Every carrier in Canada (there are 3 national ones, two sharing new resources) now has GSM/UTMS. I think the US companies had better get on the ball and standardize when they move forward to 4G.

The problem with AT&T is that their service is awful. I never had any real problems with dropped calls, large dead zones, etc., until I got AT&T service. At least I'm not paying for it.

And the fact that the N1 is not controlled by a service provider is one of the reasons I got it. Would you want your computer being controlled and limited by your ISP?

Yeah, all good reasons. Was it just the 4G that put the Evo on the top of your list?

I was originally with T-Mobile and more recently AT&T for precisely this reason, so that my phone would roam properly when I went to Europe.

Of my various European adventures, though, I've found that I don't actually use my phone much because it's so shockingly expensive ($1.29/minute, I believe), versus just using Skype or whatnot. Maybe I could ditch the phone altogether, but certainly I can't discount the need for a phone as an emergency device.

The 4G LTE standard (Wikipedia link) will be supported by both AT&T and Verizon and is clearly intended to be the end-all-be-all of wireless transmission standards. An interesting question is whether they'll be able to make phones that can operate world-wide, given the wide variety of different frequency bands.

Sorry to hear that, Tom, though I think you'd find higher prices on Verizon if they had the EVO. On the other hand, they're the only carrier I know of that has a phone capable of tethering and officially don't charge for that (the Pre+), but the price would probably come out to about the same.

Like Bitt, I bought the Nexus One to have the feeling of being independent from my carrier. T-Mobile has no fingers in my phone, and I love that.

Tom, I think your search for an Android phone does indeed sound like it's over. If using data while you're on a call really is that important to you, then you can only go with a GSM carrier (is it possible to even do this on the EVO? I hadn't heard if their 4G implementation was capable of it). So that leaves AT&T and T-Mobile. AT&T completely f***s up their Android phones, so they're out. Personally, T-Mobile is just fine in my area, and I rarely leave my area, so the quality of the carriers is equal (and T-Mobile has better pricing), but that may not be true for you.

So that's about it. Is T-Mobile good in your area? Do you travel internationally very often (and take your phone with you)?

Yeah, for the most part. Coverage in Austin seems decent from talking to various Clear users here, though signal strength at work is bad due to the window coating and tower distance. The Evo was getting good reviews for the speed and screen quality, but the battery life is also a big factor for me now. If I get a device that does WiFi tethering, I'd probably look to use it frequently instead of using the 3G modem in my iPad. If the Evo can't make it a full day on standby, I imagine even light tethering will just kill it, leaving me without data on the iPad.

As for AT&T service, I've had no issues with them in Austin, so I'm not looking to make a switch just to get usable service. At work, I get 5 bars and good data coverage anywhere in the building (including the elevators), and at home it's 3-4 bars. I'm not certain how T-Mobile service is in this area to compare. Maybe I should go steal, err, borrow Caleb's phone and see what reception is like at home and work.

I love having to call people back because the phone decides to drop the call in the middle of it. We have an antenna in my room (it is right above my boss' desk) and I still have the signal drop for no reason, while others are still at full strength. I got a new phone and the problems aren't as frequent, but they still exist. AT&T service just plain old sucks. At least I'm not paying for it either.

I didn't bring my phone the last time I went to Europe, and it made for a much nicer vacation

If you're just talking about an emergency phone, wouldn't T-Mobile phones still work for calls and EDGE data? I thought it was 3G frequencies that differed from international standards (and AT&T's).

I think the Engadget Mobile review said something like three hours for hotspot sharing, with other light usage. That's less than you'll get on the 3G iPad, but I think it's equivalent to what you get with devices like the MiFi. Besides, how often are you using your iPad, while constantly using data, for three hours in a row, while not being near somewhere you could plug your phone in? I know it's an inconvenience, but how often would you run into it?

The only reason I'm considering eventually getting a tablet of some kind (yes, I was wrong, I want one) is because I can tether it to my phone for no additional cost. That's huge to me, and I really hope that the carriers eventually don't charge for tethering.

(Wow, lots of us posting at the same time, popular thread)

When I went to the empeg meet in 2004 with my T610, I bought a prepaid SIM in London to use. Calls were way cheeper for me that way, as most of my need for a phone was to call other people in Europe. Having my own phone was nice, as I still had my contact list. Now with smartphones, that probably even more important, though AT&T won't unlock the iPhone like they will other phones.

If I were to travel over there again soon, I'd probably go a similar route of picking up a prepaid SIM with data. I'd use Skype for calls back home, and normal voice for calling local places. I'd definitely need the phone for emergencies if I did similar activities like I did in 2004 (riding around on a motorcycle in the Alps).

Random side note, thanks again to everyone who let me stay with them, or showed me the areas where they lived. That trip in 04 is still one of my fondest memories.


I had assumed wrongly it seems. I was under the impression the phone uses 4G only for data and 3G CDMA for voice, and that still seems to be true. But it still doesn't allow both to be used, according to the FAQ on Android Central.

In my day to day usage, not often. At work I could have the phone sit on a charger and provide data. The biggest time I could think of would be when I travel, and I have been in airports a lot more recently with trips back to Colorado. Having recently been able to shed a lot of travel gear, I'd hate to have to go back to being one of those poor huddles souls in the gate area, desperately searching for a spare plug to keep their device charged while using it. My first flight with the iPad was so nice when I didn't have to worry about batteries and was still able to use the device for various streaming while waiting.

The other time will likely be during this summer as Mustang events become more common. Then I suppose I'd have to carry around a charger cable too.

Where is that amazing battery tech we clearly need to just fix this situation? Even Apple's attempts in the area aren't anything new, just highly optimizing existing tech or space.

Yeah, when travelling, I could definitely see an advantage to being free from the socket. That's why I'm thinking of getting one of these. It's nothing new, but I like the form factor.


This really is the next area of innovation that needs to happen. With so many things going mobile, battery technology has never been more important. I know we have it better than ever before, but I still can't help but feel that battery tech has not advanced as quickly as everything else.

The iPad does have stunningly good battery life, but as you said, they have an optimized software/hardware experience, and the battery is pretty large.

I'll give Apple a lot of credit, not only for optimizing their physical batteries, but for pushing on the software side. By banning background applications, they really have done a lot to improve battery life, and it's clear that, umm, "power-aware programming" is going to be a non-trivial effort, going forward, to ensure that phones behave how we want while getting more mileage out of their batteries.

Regardless, I hope we get some radically better battery technology, one of these days, although this will lead to other issues (e.g., the more energy you pack into a battery, the more it starts looking like a bomb).

Ugh, I know we've all debated this to death here before, but I don't see this as a truth. I didn't address this portion of the EVO battery life link earlier, but it's another part that I call BS on.

When I had a G1 I needed a task killer. I agree that the G1's hardware was not capable of multitasking, but it could at least do it. Well, I'm here to tell you that the Nexus One has no problems with background apps. I've ditched my task managing app and now just let the phone do whatever it wants. I haven't noticed performance issues, and I still get the battery power I mentioned earlier in this thread.

*lurker mode off*
Google does sell a model of the N1 that works on AT&T's 3G bands, it's the only decent Android phone for them. All the ones AT&T sells are extremely crippled.

I've got the G1 currently, and I still love it despite being very long in the tooth now. I've got a N1 on the way since T-Mobile is the best provider for me. The rest of the providers gets 0-1 bar where I live, and the wind has to be blowing in the right direction.

Yep, and it does me little good though. If I decide I don't like it, (and Android is going to have to do a lot to win me over compared to my current iPhone), I'm out $45 for restocking, plus shipping, plus whatever other fees. And a hard limit of exactly 14 days to try it out.

The Evo was potentially attractive since I could get it from a local store, try it, and have up to 30 days to return it and get a full, 100% return of my money. And on top of Android, it offered 4G, something I currently don't have and likely won't on AT&T till well into 2012.

I see your problem, and I don't blame you for not wanting to risk having to return the N1. Though I feel just about the same way about the iPhone as you do about Android. It was love at first sight, and I can't even understand how something as locked down as the iPhone got to be that big. Though iPhone OS has dropped down to third place behind Android. Both are being beat by Blackberry though.

I keep a task killer loaded on the phone just in case. I use it occasionally when an app screws up and I need to start it clean.

Other than that, the only use I can see for it is to automatically kill programs that lock the GPS on, and I don't actually do that in reality; I don't trust any of the killers enough not to do it when I'm using the app, which might be in the background at any given time.

For me, the biggest thing that attracted me to the iPhone (the first one) was the browser. Previous smartphones at that point were just glorified PDAs with crappy internet support. PDA wise, I tried to integrate them into my life with a Palm III, Palm V, then an iPaq, and all eventually left my service after a short time. The biggest thing that I liked was that on the Palm V, I had a GPRS modem, giving me a very early taste of internet access on the road.

After owning the first iPhone, it was just natural to keep going with them. A year after launch and apps came in. That made it even more useful outside having a non crappy browser and decent e-mail support. Android is definitely picking up steam*, but all my previous experiences really just haven't given me a good feel for it. I have enough time to glance at the surface and see the rough edges, but not enough time to feel out how the OS would actually work in my life.

Beyond just the iPhone though, I have really come to appreciate Apple's approach to things. This started with my Windows to Mac transition back in 2001. OS X won me over by providing a good solid Unix core along with a good consistent and usable GUI. The hardware also one me over by paying attention to little details other manufacturers continued to ignore.

I could probably go on a while, but I've posted my feelings before in other threads. Ultimately I'm willing to give up a bit of openness to gain polish. Apple is good enough in following standards similar to the open side unlike Microsoft that I don't feel trapped. But now that I have grown used to the very high level of polish in both my hardware and software, I have a hard time looking at desktop Linux, Windows, Android, Dell, or whatever without seeing all the rough pointy bits.

At the same time, I want to be aware of what is out there, just to see if maybe if the little cuts I'll get from the rough edges are worth it for some particular feature or ability. The reason I'm shying away from just buying a Nexus One or some other phone though is due to a parallel experience in my car. I had the nice Apple level of quality with the empeg. It works well, had polish that no other product out there had, and was reliable. I gave up on that and tried the CarPC route for the past few years, and I absolutely hate it. There were some awesome features, but ultimately the lack of polish and refinement, along with stability issues killed it for me. I'm now debating sinking more money into the mess to rip it all out and install the empeg, or buying a new car to get the Ford Sync system.


*though it was only in second place in the US for one quarter as far as sales, the iPhone still has a commanding lead over Android devices both US and world wide market share wise. It will be really interesting to see where Android goes from here, as it is definitely strong enough already to be providing great competition that will ultimately benefit the entire market.

Along with Blackberry, the iPhone is probably the only phone that pretty much everyone around the world knows by name. It has huge numbers in mindshare which quarter after quarter are helping to turn conversions.

Nice work, AT&T.

If you notice, the choice quote comes from Valleywag, one of the turds from the Gawker asshole network. The only thing this story has to do with Apple is that the email addresses belong to iPad owners. This is entirely an ATT issue, despite Gawker's (repeated) libelous attempts to smear Apple (their story is titled "Apple's Worst Security Breach")

Ever since Gawker got in trouble for stealing the iPhone prototype they've had a huge public hate-on for Apple. It's even tipped their usually slanted "stories" further into the toilet.

By virtue of their exclusivity agreement for iPhones and 3G iPads, and with chains only being as strong as their weakest links, AT&T's security breaches are Apple's security breaches.

The breach is not Apple's *fault*, but Apple chose to do business with AT&T, and they must accept part of the reputation damage that comes with an incident like this. A similar dynamic exists with the alliance of BP and TransOcean, who operated the Deepwater Horizon oil rig. I did not find BP's attempts to distance themselves from TransOcean convincing, nor do I find any attempts to distance Apple and AT&T convincing.

In short, he who lies down with dogs will rise with fleas.

Data specific to an Apple product was stolen, but this isn't at all similar in any way shape or form to the BP situation. That's like saying VISA was breached when Monoprice's servers were siphoned for transaction/billing details.

Further, the data wasn't obtained by compromising an iPad as the story initially leads you to believe as well. That's just Gawker spicing things up.

It's shameful on ATT and yes, Apple can't help but be involved here. But they also have no choice in the US for other partners since all the other networks have their heads up their asses with out-dated, ill-conceived, non-standard and non-compatible 2G and 3G networks. The story can be reported without a libelous slant and misdirection.

Yeah, and to be clear, I'm not disputing that Gawker took some cheap shots, but you went too far in trying to distance the two entities in your post. Apple and AT&T are partners in the US, and, regardless of how and why that relationship came to be, they share responsibility for these issues.

We still disagree on the term "responsibility" - in my view (at least so far as security goes), Apple are no more responsible than the people whose email addresses were obtained. In fact, even less so. Apple didn't give ATT the data, their customers did. It would be no different if data was stolen from Best Buy or Walmart - Apple does business with those guys too. Apple's association ends at their decision to do business with the company responsible - and as mentioned, they didn't really have much of a choice in that regard).

I'm glad to see another blog call out Gawker on their bullshit: TUAW

They didn't have a choice because AT&T's network is more standard? How does that follow?

ATT is the only choice in the US when making a mobile telecom product that's also supposed to cater to the rest of the world. GSM/UTMS, using common frequency bands. Three UMTS bands and four GSM being enough to cover pretty much everywhere, which every iPhone until version 4 was equipped with (minus UMTS for version 1).

Right, and my point is Apple had a choice -- they could have done GSM abroad and CDMA in the US. It's not like other manufacturers don't deal with it. Saying they had no choice just because they chose some arbitrary limitations on that choice doesn't wash. They may have made a financially prudent choice, but they had other carriers to choose from.

No one said it had anything to do with Apple. Defensive much?

Gawker did. They've been trying to defame the company for weeks now - it's so ridiculous it's now being covered by other blogs.

Tony, I don't know of any other single phone off hand that offers both GSM and CDMA. So you're suggesting that Apple could have made two distinct and incompatible (so far as cellular networking goes) products. The US product further unable to be taken out of the country because it would fail to work anywhere else. Yeah, that's definitely a choice. Up there with picking between flying to Europe or rowing a boat while dragging an anchor.

Could have done, but that's then making two separate products which takes 2x the effort... speaking personally, I spent enough time in china for the first phone

Blackberry make the 8830 that can do GSM and CDMA.


The choice is to make it like the Blackberry 8830 World Edition?

There are products that do GSM and CDMA. Look at the verizon world phones (I think they sell a couple of blackberries that fit this bill). The consequence is generally a bigger/more expensive phone as you're paying for, and having to fit, circuitry that you don't need on your "home" network, whatever flavour that might be.

Why is this so radical, exactly? There is a CDMA Palm Pre for Sprint and Verizon, and a GSM Palm Pre for AT&T. I don't follow the mobile product landscape too closely, but I'm sure there are others. The phones don't have to interoperate with each other, just the networks they're on. It's simple, if you want access to more subscribers, you make a CDMA variant of your phone. Apple decided to do the exclusive thing for 5 years or whatever. Nobody forced them to.


There are plenty of people who choose a phone that doesn't work overseas, myself included. I'd rather deal with using a prepaid phone overseas than to be a slave to AT&T.

It's not like you have to rewrite the OS and apps for the CDMA variant, or change a vast majority of the components inside. Just a different radio and some changes to the hardware design, right?

So, not 2x the effort.. maybe 1.05x the effort, or less, probably?

Oh, I just take my GSM phone and put a prepaid SIM in it. The inability to do that with nearly all iPhones irks me to no end and you'd likely read in another of my posts.

Having two products would be a nightmare. Apple is as profitable as it is because it knows how to mind its costs (as well as sell a lot of product). Having two supply chains is a lot of work. Definitely 2x the work for someone that isn't involved with the OS. Hugo is on the hardware side right?

Putting CDMA hardware into all iPhones would have been expensive. Not to mention detrimental to the design which is already using all the space afforded by its footprint. Doesn't seem logical to me to toss in support for technologies that are only used in the US and that are just going to disappear.

Anyway, none of this really has anything to do with the issue that ATT had some poor security on some of the data on its web site.

Maybe it's more work for the team that does the hardware design, though a majority of the hardware components would be shared. What you get for that extra work is access to Verizon and Sprint's customers. There are a lot of them.

Obviously, the lucrative exclusive contract is the reason they didn't go that way. Were it not for that contract, there would be a CDMA iPhone, and it would be on Sprint and Verizon. Making your phone available to more subscribers is going to be worth the extra cost and duplication of supply chains and yadda yadda.



No, but you made a false statement about how Apple had no choice other than AT&T. They had plenty of choices, but they picked the lucrative AT&T exclusive deal.

Ok... They had no other "sensible" choices at the time.

It was only sensible to go with AT&T because AT&T waved a giant stack of cash and it smelled good to Apple and its shareholders. The other choices were sensible, just not as lucrative.

I don't begrudge them for pursuing the best financial deal possible, but you can't then say they had no other choices because of technologies. It was a financial decision, not a technological decision, and if Verizon were coughing up $400 per phone (or whatever it is) the iPhone would be CDMA-only in the US and GSM everywhere else.

I had no idea Tony had such inside connections into Apple's business and contract decisions to know more about the situation then an Apple hardware engineer

Errrr, no.

Well, not from a HW point of view at least; you're talking about a totally different RF hardware team (nothing is common, pretty much) then different baseband software stack, maybe different software interface to the applications processor, a new RF test team (different specs, different standards), a new approvals team to deal with the approvals, then every test you run on the hardware from reliability to EMC to ESD has to be run on two different designs.

If you look at eg, how motorola is structured, they have totally different teams working on CDMA and GSM variants of their phones. It's not like one team cranks out both; a platform team will make the AP section then two separate RF platform teams will contribute the RF platforms, then two separate project teams will glue bits together and deal with all the integration issues.

Can it be done? Obviously it can be done. Motorola and HTC do it all the time. Ever noticed how Apple tends to concentrate their effort on one thing at a time and do it really well instead of trying to please everyone?

Look at it in that context and you'll see why if you're picking one thing to make, you don't make a CDMA phone. It's needlessly limiting. Make a WCDMA/GSM phone and you can sell it everywhere including the USA.

Apple signed on with Cingular prior to ATT's acquisition. I doubt very much there was a big stack of cash waved up front. What there may have been was a really good subsidy and bonus model and of course, as mentioned, the huge benefits of a GSM network.

Tony, you don't think Apple could have come out with an aPhone that ran the same software as the iPhone but didn't violate the agreement with Cingular/ATT? I don't think the exclusivity contract would have stood in the way if Apple saw a large enough benefit to having previously supported Verizon.

Verizon and the other US carriers need to roll out new networks. Bell has done just this in Canada, bringing along Telus for the ride. Once the exclusivity is over, I'm confident we'll still see Apple selling a single handset. This seems to be working quite well for Apple so far.

I enjoy the way you transitioned the discussion from an AT&T security breach, to defending Apple to all the Gawker editors that read empegBBS, to why Apple's decision to choose AT&T as their sole carrier was the only possible choice.

<golf clap>

I'm only trying to reply to many of the points being made in the obviously evolving thread. Should I just ignore what other people are writing and simply repeat what I've said in a previous post to stay on topic?

This is an iPad thread and Tony's link about the iPad owner email addresses was totally relevant, however the quote and the originating story (at Gawker) were a giant pile of slanted crap. I only wanted to point out that bit of trivia and that this was squarely an ATT web site security issue.

Actually, this is an AT&T data plan/maybe the Evo looks nice/GSM and world phone thread. The iPad/ebook/flash/iAds that don't run on the iPad thread is titled "iPad". All of the above seem to be nitpick Bruno threads

*ponders just turning off thread titles*

Yeah, sorry... ATT thread. Making Tony's link and the "real" story mostly on-topic (since it's ATT's ineptitude and all).

Ultimately, I defer to your expertise on the issue, but your statement that it's 2x as much effort wasn't limited to the hardware aspects. I get what you're saying about having separate test teams, some duplication at the software level, and people to deal with regulatory crap, and I probably lowballed my 5% higher number, but I just can't see it being 100% higher. Maybe there's not as much shared as I thought, but is it true that there is zero shared?

Based on his comment of "totally different RF hardware team (nothing is common, pretty much)" I'd assume not much can be shared, though I am curious too. Beyond just designing the phone, you also have the overhead of manufacturing two separate mainboards (based on photos showing the radio/SIM bits on the same PCB as the flash/processor), sourcing the different parts, additional logistics or shipping more SKUs, and so on.

I'd actually be interested in seeing a teardown of one of the Chinese iPhones (the ones lacking WiFi) to see how Apple currently handles that. With those phones it's just a matter of taking something out.

The iPad would likely be easier to go CDMA first, with the modem being a separate PCB that plugs into the mainboard. And with no voice, simultaneous voice/data issues go away.

Easier perhaps, but there's even less reason to offer a CDMA alternative for that platform for a number of reasons. The first one is that the existing service plan available for it isn't tied to your (any) existing cell plan. Presumably having a CDMA board would mean other carriers would/could offer something similar, making the only advantage one of possible price competition for that data plan.

The iPad is more of a computer than pocketable communications device. Chances are you'll have (and want) WiFi where you'll be using it most. A lot of people are going to skip the 3G add-on. I'm not sure creating two different add-ons is going to bring double the upgrades.

We don't deal with hardware designs nearly as complex as the iPhone, but for us, even seemingly minor changes can introduce a massive workload in hardware design.

You know, when you're fitting in large pin count BGA devices into as tighter space as possible you make use of every single last space on the board as possible, even so much as adding a new resistor or changing swapping the functionality of a pin on the device can introduce days to weeks of work for the layout people.

In Hugos world things are even more amplified by having so many different requirements (certification, testing, manufacture etc).

Given whats already been said as you point out they just won't fit the components that are required for WiFI, presumably the software doesn't need a special build as it'll know from its model number whether or not to initialise and provide options for WiFI to the user.

We have our own pick and place machine at work now, and I modified our cad software to support build attributes, therefore every component on the board can be part of a specific build (and have a specific value for that build), it outputs direct to the pick and place machine. It's literally a case of "Select which options you want on this board and then upload to the machine", press start and the machine goes off placing all the components you've selected.

We try to look as far in advance as possible, what our customers are likely to want (we're talking oems here) and we build in that functionality, it's quite nice when they say "actually, could you make it do x? sure, we made provisions for that in the design". It always happens and most of the time it's a doddle to accomodate what they want.

I am obviously coming at it from the HW point of view; much SW would be shared, but software already developed just kinda stays developed and can get shuffled onto new platforms as required - there's very little effort required there.

On the HW front it's multiplication of effort. Every design is different, and it's not as if there is an infinite pool of the right engineers already employed either so it's much harder than saying "this is the direction we're going to go in".

iPhone available (from Apple) unlocked in UK and Canada and France. Fucking insane prices.