verizon turned down the iphone! Says new phone due late summer!

[AndrewAz]

First off we need to understand something about the GPS, only a few phone have real true GPS that uses GPS satellites, the rest of them use cell phone towers to triangulate. Trying using this system off the network or when you are only close to 1-2 towers and your accuracy will be off by miles.

 

[efudd]

exactly- not all have gps. it depends on teh carrier. I beleive vz specs gps in all their phones though so they can sell the addon get it now navigator and later on they can sent you text messages when they relaize you are next door to their advertiser. Give it time- in a few years you'll drive past a mcdonalds and you'll get a text "show this code to the cashier for a half price value meal"

I suspect the reason treos cant get that get it now navigator program is we cant get any get it now- they write them solely in that brew thing (or some other proprietary flavor) that wont run on a treo. Maybe one day they will make a brew VM like you can download that huge Java VM but that's probably about all they would do.

 

[gksmithlcw]

exactly- not all have gps. it depends on teh carrier. I beleive vz specs gps in all their phones though so they can sell the addon get it now navigator and later on they can sent you text messages when they relaize you are next door to their advertiser. Give it time- in a few years you'll drive past a mcdonalds and you'll get a text "show this code to the cashier for a half price value meal"

I suspect the reason treos cant get that get it now navigator program is we cant get any get it now- they write them solely in that brew thing (or some other proprietary flavor) that wont run on a treo. Maybe one day they will make a brew VM like you can download that huge Java VM but that's probably about all they would do.

*is running a 'brew' VM on his Treo 700wx with no problems.*

 

[efudd]

*is running a 'brew' VM on his Treo 700wx with no problems.*

and there ya have it!

LOL

sorry for my ignorance- but is there an offical brew VM for windows mobile devices? Or did someone make one?

 

[car_designer]

What the heck does this have to do with 700p hardware??????

Please post in the correct forum

Mods, could you please move this to the iphone forum?

Thanks a bunch!

 

[haroldo]

Verizon Plots iPhone Killer

Verizon Plots iPhone Killer

By Scott Moritz
Senior Writer
5/24/2007 6:46 AM EDT


Verizon (VZ - Cramer's Take - Stockpickr - Rating) is preparing a secret weapon for the escalating handset wars.

Just a month before Apple's (AAPL - Cramer's Take - Stockpickr - Rating) iPhone is due to juice AT&T's (T - Cramer's Take - Stockpickr - Rating) growth, industry watchers say New York-based Verizon has some hand candy of its own to sweeten sales.

"They are working on an answer to the iPhone that is supposed to be pretty good," says one telecom expert who is familiar with Verizon's effort.

Verizon's anti-iPhone is LG's Prada. The Prada, or KE 850, was recently introduced in England and is very similar in appearance to the iPhone...

Read more at The Street.com

 

[tony bag o donuts]

Ha! Verizon hardware and service support?? Has anyone ever had actual hardware or service support from Verizon? I certainly haven't.

I haven't had any issues with them and its been yrs. One time when they bell atlantic became part of verizon I had an issue but that was six yrs ago.

 

[mircury]

No they wouldn't... Wifi has a range of what, 1000'?? Even if there were hotspots all over the place, it wouldn't do you any good driving around. As soon as you obtained a connection with a hub, you'd lose it seconds later. There is a huge difference between wifi and wireless broadband. Comparing wifi to EVDO is not much different than comparing bluetooth to EVDO. They serve two totally different functions.

Greg

There is technology to hop from one access point to another with VOIP. Plus, you can get a wifi amplifier off ebay and extend your range for a couple of miles. It is illegal for us consumers but there is nothing stopping a commercial company from doing this. In fact there are several cities that now have free wifi or are ramping up city wide wifi solutions. Where I live we have free wifi in all city parks. Right now cell phone companies are like oil companies: Maximize profit while stifling innovation and technological advancement.

 

[efudd]

and who's going to provide this free wifi?

no one.

a city might do it but that's going to be in your taxes- it's not like VZ or ATT or Comcast is goign to just build giant free wifi networks.

you can't get somethign for nothing.

More likely are nationwide PAY wimax networks- sprint is building one now and I wouldn't doubt that with the tv channels about to be auctioned off that someone else trys to do the same. Directv and DISH made a feeble attempt at some nationwide spectrum recently to do something like that- but the big celluar companies way outbid them.

 

[mircury]

and who's going to provide this free wifi?

no one.

a city might do it but that's going to be in your taxes- it's not like VZ or ATT or Comcast is goign to just build giant free wifi networks.

you can't get somethign for nothing.

More likely are nationwide PAY wimax networks- sprint is building one now and I wouldn't doubt that with the tv channels about to be auctioned off that someone else trys to do the same. Directv and DISH made a feeble attempt at some nationwide spectrum recently to do something like that- but the big celluar companies way outbid them.

Ok, I agree it's not going to be totally free. You will pay for it some way, like taxes. But in the future I can see it costing less than dialup these days. Wifi for less than 15 bucks a month gets you internet and unlimited calling to anywhere in the world. Cell phone companies will try to delay this as much as possible and will not offer features such as VOIP unless it clearly makes them money, whether it's good for the consumer or not. In the US, VOIP on cell phone company offered cell phones is rare despite wide spread possibilities. Can you imagine being at work for 40 hours a week and being able to make calls for free on your cell and then having free nights and weekends when you go home? Disaster for cell companies.

 

[BMIC50]

Ok, I agree it's not going to be totally free. You will pay for it some way, like taxes. But in the future I can see it costing less than dialup these days. Wifi for less than 15 bucks a month gets you internet and unlimited calling to anywhere in the world. Cell phone companies will try to delay this as much as possible and will not offer features such as VOIP unless it clearly makes them money, whether it's good for the consumer or not. In the US, VOIP on cell phone company offered cell phones is rare despite wide spread possibilities. Can you imagine being at work for 40 hours a week and being able to make calls for free on your cell and then having free nights and weekends when you go home? Disaster for cell companies.

I can see the cellular companies going to a flat rate, like Metro PCS, to compete with the VoIP companies. Just like you have $15-$20/month fees for Sprint Vision/PowerVision services, evolution will cause them to include more services like MyCircle or Fav Five. Its coming, but they will do what they can to curb that wave.

 

[Bob-C]

real reason...

IMO Verizon turned it down because they think iPhone will be an iBust for Apple. I have changed my thinking along those lines myself. Nice screen on that phone but just wait until you need to use it in the middle of eating and get your sticky, greasy fingers all over it. There is no way that it will sell the numbers that Jobs projected in his presentation.

 

[efudd]

Ok, I agree it's not going to be totally free. You will pay for it some way, like taxes. But in the future I can see it costing less than dialup these days. Wifi for less than 15 bucks a month gets you internet and unlimited calling to anywhere in the world. Cell phone companies will try to delay this as much as possible and will not offer features such as VOIP unless it clearly makes them money, whether it's good for the consumer or not. In the US, VOIP on cell phone company offered cell phones is rare despite wide spread possibilities. Can you imagine being at work for 40 hours a week and being able to make calls for free on your cell and then having free nights and weekends when you go home? Disaster for cell companies.

well sure they will try to delay it- they do what is good for themselves first and customers second- that's just the nature of the beast.

To be honest- I'm not that up on voip- all I know is i have voip included in my triple play from cable- it costs me money and I know that if I want to ditch the triple play and go with vonage or someone else it still costs me money. My understanding is you have to pay someone to connect your call on the other end to POTS (plain old telephone) and there are not free unlimited things yet to do that- am i wrong? You can get skype- but doesn't the other person need skype too? isn't that like instant messaging for audio basically?

If there was some magical method to get free voip phone calls then someone would be making a 500 dollar device that hooked to your 'free' home and 'free' office wifi- no?

Long term- I'm sure VOIP is the future- in a matter of a few years I suspect more people will be on voip than pots. But that doesn't mean you wont be paying someone for it- does it?

not being a wise-a trying to learn. So please 'splain away!

 

[efudd]

I can see the cellular companies going to a flat rate, like Metro PCS, to compete with the VoIP companies. Just like you have $15-$20/month fees for Sprint Vision/PowerVision services, evolution will cause them to include more services like MyCircle or Fav Five. Its coming, but they will do what they can to curb that wave.

That's how most things seem to evolve over time. It happened with local calls then long distance and then the Internet. It's probably just a matter of time.

The interesting thing is that flat rate pricing actually is very inefficient- it winds up costing the average user much more in the long term. ATT studied the pee out of it in regards to local calls, long distance, and then Internet. (The NEW ATT nee cingular/sbc probably has studied it too about cell phones).

What they found time and again is that 10% of the users use 90% of the network. Since these company's are for profit that means that 90% of us pay too much to subsidize the 10% who go hog wild.

The other issue is it creates wasteful usage and forces overbuilding of the network. Sort of like we all get nights and weekends free- because the networks are built strong enough to handle the daytime volume- they basically sit fallow over the weekend and since the incremental cost to service each call is like nothing they toss in free nights and weekends. So the current network is built to handle weekday volume. If everyone went to unlimited then a significant amount of people would use even more daytime calls - they might ditch land lines- and would have no fear of going over their allotted minutes. So the providers would need to build up their networks some more to handle that (remember the debacle when AOL went to unlimited how they had to quickly build up their network to handle all the additional usage and busy signal's were the norms for months and months?)- so who's going to pay for that huge build up needed for the network- VZ, ATT, sprint? Nope the users. And again 90% of us will over pay for he 10% hogs. So it's a double whammy for most- so be carefull of what you wish for.

I'm not sure of cell costs- but those same studies show that the price of landline phone calls over time basically dropped in a linear fashion as technology and efficiency's increased. So i'd imagine the same is happening with cell calls. When you go flat rate pricing the linear drop sort of stabilizes and that's the end of it. How much has anyone's unlimited dial up dropped since AOL forced the market to unlimited years ago? Most went up since then- no?